


Mating Run

by Starless_Void



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Peter Hale, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, BUT VERY VAGUE, Derek Hale & Stiles Stilinski Friendship, Fluff, GASP, I know, I will forget, Intersex Omegas, M/M, Mating Bites, Mating Rituals, Mating Run, Omega Derek Hale, Omega Stiles Stilinski, Past Abuse, Rated E for Eventual Smut, Scent Kink, Soft Peter, Werefox Stiles Stilinski, also, cause if I dont do it now, not a big plot point, werefox!stiles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:35:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29646564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starless_Void/pseuds/Starless_Void
Summary: Newly presented werefox omega, Stiles Stilinski, signs up for the annual Mating Run, a supernatural event designed to pair eligible were-folk of the candid variety.Alpha Peter Hale returns to his hometown after being away for ten years, traveling the world and making his fortune, or, well, adding to it, at least.You can guess what happens next...;)
Relationships: Chris Argent/Derek Hale, Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 49
Kudos: 303





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Kinda feel like this is poorly written, but it was fun and its light and full of fluff, Stiles and Derek friendship fluff, soft Peter fluff, fluffy Stiles fluff... the good stuff.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I edited this chapter to fix some mistakes and add a small bit of dialog. I have accepted that this is in no way going to be my magnum opus, so I am just going to have fun writing it and not sweat the small stuff! Hope you enjoy this goofy work!

Stiles bursts through a line of thick pine trees to rush across the clearing. His bare feet, hardened by callouses, smack the earth loudly where it is packed down and firm, and he winces at the sound, trying to flatten his ears further into his head. 

His tail sticks straight out behind him, helping him balance as he navigates the unfamiliar terrain, leaping over a large rock to enter the dense forest once again. He has to have been running for hours, the sun is nearly at its apex now, but he finds himself barely panting and nowhere near the end of his rope. It’s the first week of July, giving him only a month and a half to train himself for the Mating Run on the third week of August, and he has a lot of ground to cover, literally and metaphorically. 

Stupid late fox puberty. His parents assumed the gene had skipped Stiles when he never showed any signs growing up, but after sprouting orange ears from his unruly bedhead and a fluffy tail out of his ass one morning, followed by a long heart-to-heart with his dad followed by an even longer period of internet research, Stiles can now officially count himself as part of the supernatural. A shifter. Well, more like a mixture between a magic user and a fox, as his particular heritage gave him the innate ability to practice magic, but he doesn’t even want to tackle that part of this right now.

Especially after he spent eight excruciating days developing a new, additional reproductive system. Yeah, he thought his stomach hurt after eating too much Taco Bell, but spicy tacos had nothing on growing a fully functional set of ovaries and a womb to match. He had to change all his paperwork from beta to omega, since he hit sixteen and registered as a beta, everyone figuring that if he hadn’t presented by then, he wouldn’t from here on out. 

They were wrong, and he wanted to shred them to pieces for lulling him into a false sense of normalcy. More than a few throw pillows were rendered to shreds with his doctors faces in mind as he sweated and writhed in his bed for eight. Fucking. Days. Worst way to start his summer vacation. 

A noise to his left startles him out of his thoughts and has him pivoting and racing in the opposite direction, not out of fear, but out of reflex. The mating run is coming up, and all unmated were-creatures ages eighteen and up were eligible to attend. 

For all the stories on the internet that told him of the ways it could go wrong, of how an alpha could force themselves on him, or how he could get hurt running, or lost in the wilderness, there were stories of how it could go right. How he could catch the scent of a mate, of how he could give in to his animal instincts in a way that isn’t allowed in normal society, stories that told of how freeing it was to run with others of his kind. 

Not that he had any hope of running into another fox during the run. Beacon Hills was mostly wolf territory, and the big Hale pack that owned most of the land here and hosted the run on a part of their property often invited all the packs they had alliances and treaties with, which was a fuck ton. So the runs were pretty wolf-dominated.

Humans were not allowed to run in these events, if they even knew about them, for their own safety. No one ever really argued, plus it wasn’t really in human nature to want to run around the forest sans-clothes all night. Some humans try to sneak onto the grounds while the run is going on, whether through sheer stupidity, or a rumor of some kind of private event but it is pretty well monitored by the members of the Hale pack that were already mated. 

Well, having the Argents there to offer support helped too. Apparently there was a whole scandal with the hunter family a couple years back, but it turned out to just be a few crazy members who were acting outside of the main family. Within days of an attempted arson attack, they were turned in to the Council of Druids, and Stiles is pretty sure they are dead.

He could ask his friend Allison, who broke away from the family with her father after some other scandal that involved her mother killing herself instead of just completing the transition to werewolf, but he more than anyone else understands how it feels to lose your mother, and would never intentionally bring up memories that are better off buried. 

Stiles was so sure that Allison and Scott were going to mate, they made such a sickeningly cute couple, but Allison ended up falling in love with another beta, Isaac, and Scott respected it, the two remaining friends. Stiles doesn’t know how they can even look at each other, what with how infatuated they were when they first got together, but he hasn’t had any dating experience, so he leaves it be. 

Lost in his own thoughts, Stiles unconsciously begins to slow down, and he finds himself at a brisk jog instead of the full out sprint he was trying to maintain. He also finds himself at the edge of the Hale property. 

His newfound sense of smell has been mostly a curse since he started his transformation. He actually has to clean his room around once a week to stay comfortable, and do his laundry twice as often to keep the scent of body odor from forming a miasma around his hamper. 

He is also able to smell others in a way that he couldn’t even begin to comprehend before he changed. Scent is like a fingerprint, everyone has one and they are all different, but can be easily sorted into categories, like male and female. Alpha, beta, omega. Human or supernatural. 

He was pleasantly surprised to find out that werewolves do not smell like wet dog, and actually have a pretty wide spectrum of woodsy scents, like a candle section during the holidays. 

Cutting off his sniffing, he snorts, tail swishing behind him as he imagines a bunch of tiny werewolves trapped in jars, being sold for their smells at the local Bath and Body Works. It’s probably the reason he doesn’t hear the stomping footsteps until they are already upon him.

“What are you doing here.” A rough voice grunts out, cutting into the soothing silence of the surrounding forest.

Stiles freezes, dread washing over him. He slowly turns to look at the very large, and very angry werewolf glaring at him from about ten feet away. Were it not for the circumstances, Stiles would say he is hot, in that bad-boy-leather-jacket kind of way, with dark stubble over a very impressive jawline. 

The soothing scent of omega wafts over to him and Stiles finds himself looking around for another person, because surely the six foot tall wall of muscle and man-pain over here was not an omega like Stiles. 

He must be a bit obvious with his train of thought because the man lets out a very menacing growl and takes a step forward. “I don’t like repeating myself.” It remains unsaid that the man is more than willing to prove that he can take Stiles, omega or not. 

Mouth gaping, Stiles manages to articulate a very thoughtful reply; “Uh, well I- that is to say, um, I was, do I?” He wasn’t even aware that his voice went up that high. 

An unamused scowl is his response from dark and broody, but Stiles can see him flare his nostrils as he tries to scent him from afar. He has been tamping down his scent as much as possible to make him seem smaller and less of a threat, but his lack of scent seems to have the opposite effect on the wolf, and he is a wolf, he totally gave himself away with the growling and the posturing. 

And the speed, because now he has a large hand wrapped around Stiles upper arm and gets uncomfortably close before inhaling loudly. It’s a sudden move, and an unexpected one at that, causing Stiles to lose his concentration and flood the area with the scent of distress and unease.

The sudden barrage of smells prompts the man to loosen his grip on the fox, and he takes his chance, throwing his weight against the hold and taking off at a sprint in the opposite direction. 

Is it a bad idea? Oh, that’s a given. Wolves love to chase, and Stiles knows this. His new instincts, however, are clashing very badly with his logical mind, and his instincts are telling him that he needs to go, like, now. Doesn’t matter that the mountain of a man is an omega, in fact, that makes it worse, because at least if he was an alpha he would have some sort of instinct to claim him instead of just maul him. 

The sound of crunching leaves and crashing undergrowth behind him, along with the irritated growls are pretty damning evidence that the intimidatingly attractive wolf is hot on his trail, and this may not be the training he envisioned when he set out this morning, but he is nothing if not adaptive.

Reigning in control over his scent in such a high stress situation is difficult, but he manages, or, at least he thinks he does when the growls behind him grow more irritated. Getting far enough ahead of his pursuer is going to be the tricky part, though. 

From what he can guess, the wolf behind him is a Hale, so he probably spent his childhood playing in these woods, so he most likely knows the area, giving Stiles a disadvantage, but that just makes his blood sing louder, the competitive streak in him showing a bit. 

He gains ground little by little, squeezing through tight spaces and weaving in and out of dense groves of trees until he can’t hear the rattling growls of the annoyed wolf and the thundering footsteps on his heels grow faint. 

He rips his shirt off and stuffs it in a hallowed out hole in a passing oak, turning ninety degrees and slowing his pace enough to nearly silence his movement. He thinks that his clothes hold his scent even if he cloaks it, and wants to test his theory, and there is a small part of him that screams that this is not the time for experiments, and there is a possibility of getting mauled by a very pissed off werewolf if he is wrong.

He is both reassured and discouraged at the furious roar that breaks out behind him, but it does prompt him to strip fully, strewing his clothes around the forest floor and keeping an eye out for mud to help him cover up his very alarming orange fur. 

They run for what feels like hours, having moments where Stiles gets so far ahead that he thinks he actually lost him, until the sounds of a raging werewolf inevitable reach his ears again. There are also times where Stiles can practically feel the man breathing down his neck, and he has to duck out of the way of a grabbing hand two times.

When he does get caught, he is glad that he at least tired the wolf out first, because if the murderous glint in his eye means anything, it is that he might have pushed too far. 

The indignity of being hefted a foot off the ground by a hand at the back of his neck is overshadowed by the glance at the man’s expensive watch. He probably left his house around seven in the morning and wasn’t running all that long before he picked up his very upset companion, but the watch read three o’clock. It wasn’t as long as he was aiming for but its way better than he figured he would do. 

Letting go of his scent concealment trick, he smiles dopily at the whiplashed wolf holding him like a scolded puppy and lets out a joyous laugh. “That was crazy! I had no idea I could hold my scent for that long, dude! I thought for sure I lost you when I crossed that creek, but it must have washed the mud away from my fur, right?” He ignores the way his body is basically a rag-doll in the scruffing hold, too excited not to talk about it.

“I bet I look like a big traffic cone among the greens of the woods, but it’s not anything I can control. The thought of dying my fur really makes me shudder, you know?” He waits a beat but the werewolf doesn’t even blink, his incredulous expression kind of funny since all Stiles has ever seen him do was scowl and frown. “Yeah, I guess I could try to run unshifted, but my balance is pretty dismal without my tail, so it’s a necessary evil.” The frown deepens, but Stiles just figures he is taking the time to process his word dump.

“Hey man, thanks for helping me out though. I wasn’t sure if the clothes thing would work, but I am so glad it did! My name’s Stiles by the way, I’m gonna be running in the Mating Run this August.” He would hold out a hand, but his leaden limbs don’t respond to his brains prompting but that’s all right. “I had a lot of fun today, sorry for making you mad. I’m not some asshole who thinks all omegas have to be tiny and submissive, obviously, but I was just really surprised because you are really jacked and, like, very alpha looking. It works for you, though, so kudos on that.”

A yawn creeps up on him and even though he should probably feel cold since he is wet from the creek and very much naked, he actually feels pretty warm, and his eye lids are getting heavy.

“I’m just gonna close my eyes for a sec, I feel really drained. Didn’t think I could hold the scent back that long while also running for my life.” His words are broken up by another yawn and begin to slur a bit. “Gonna outrun all the alphas, gonna win. Not gonna let any second-rate knothead catch me.”

Exhaustion finally catches up to him and he goes out like a light, the warmth from the wolfs hand more comforting than oppressing.

Derek Hale tries to wake up from the very realistic, yet very strange fever dream he must be trapped in, blinking furiously until it starts to hurt his eyes. No matter how long he stares, the young omega fox he has in his grip is still there, naked and streaked in mud, fur and hair dripping with water from the creek he crossed earlier. 

He just wanted to do a quick patrol of the border so that he could go back to his room and continue his pity party. The stupid run is coming up and his mom is finally forcing him to participate, not hearing his arguments about not wanting a mate, and seeing through his lies that he is still too traumatized to run. 

His plans were effectively squashed when he saw the kid just standing on the property border, an evil smile plastered on his face, with fake looking ears sticking out from his messy hair. No matter how close he got, he couldn’t catch his scent, until he went up and grabbed him, then it was like a veil was lifted and he got a face full of terrified omega and before he could say anything the little brat was running.

Didn’t anyone ever teach him not to run from a wolf? Derek didn’t even want to chase him at first, but his wolf was ecstatic at the thought of chasing down the threat. It even turned out to be pretty fun, with all the tricks and diversions, and the sense of accomplishment when he finally wrapped his hand over the little terrors scruff was just what he didn’t know he needed. 

He almost forgot why he was chasing him in the first place, and just barely managed to hold himself back from hugging the fox and rubbing his scent into his fur in victory. It was even more of a gut punch when he released whatever hold or whatever he had on his scent, and the aroma of happy and content omega clouded up his lungs. He talked a lot, too. Derek tuned most of it out due to confusion but he did catch the kid’s name, Stiles. 

He was also pretty sure the kid thanked him, which just scrambles his thoughts even more, and when he thought he couldn’t be more surprised, the kid closed his eyes and started snoring gently, fast asleep. 

Derek is really glad the preserve is private property because if someone stumbled upon him holding a naked and unconscious omega covered in dirt and sweat, he doesn’t think he would be able to cope.

Making the decision to take him to his mom, the alpha, Derek strips off his own shirt, his jacket having been flung aside the second the boy took flight, and wrestles the article onto the boy, not bothering to put his arms through the holes, just making sure it covers all of him. 

He has to physically hold himself back from touching the very soft looking ears and tail the boy sports, he had been so sure they weren’t real when he first saw him, no shifter he knew could manifest only ears and a tail, his own shifts were mostly claws and fangs or full on wolf. 

The boy’s tail twitches in his sleep, brushing up against his arm, and it is just as soft and fluffy as it looks, despite it being damp and leaving a trail of dirt where it touched. It doesn’t bother him as much as he thinks it should, but that could be attributed to the little snuffling noises the boy makes in his sleep as he tries to burrow closer to Derek’s warmth.

Luckily, Talia is sitting on the porch when Derek walks out of the woods, half naked with a mostly naked and very muddy figure in his arms. She is by his side in an instant, and Derek surprises them both by tightening his grip on the fox and curling his lip.

“Derek!” Talia admonishes softly, and he deflates like a popped balloon, looking nervous and confused as he tries to explain what just came over him. There is no way he should be feeling any protective instincts over some fox boy he just met. 

Sensing his distress, said fox boy squirms in his hold, and Derek nearly drops him on his ass for all the trouble he has caused him today. “I found him at the border, acting suspicious. He can hide his scent, so I wasn’t able to smell him until I touched him, but he got away from me and ran, so I chased him.” Derek explains to his alpha and mother. “When I caught him, he acted all buddy-buddy and said something about training for the run before I realized I scruffed him and he fell asleep on me.”

His mother gives him a look when he mentioned the scruffing bit, but Derek didn’t want to risk the little brat running again, so he did what he felt best at the time. 

This time, when his mother reaches out for him, he lets her take the boy from him, although he struggles more than he would like to admit with letting him go. “Do you know who he is? Is he dangerous?” Derek asks, ignoring the incredulous look his mother is trying to direct at him. Not that he can blame her, he hasn’t shown this much interest in anyone for… well, in a long time. 

“The only fox I knew in Beacon Hills was Claudia, so this could be her son, Mie…something.” Talia ventures, and now that she has said it aloud, the cheekbones of her old friend stand out to her from the boys face, as well as the smattering of moles and birthmarks covering the exposed skin. 

“Was…?” Derek edges, following his mother to her car, where she gently slides the boy into the backseat. She responds with another shocked look, but if this boy is what brings Derek out of his funk, who is she to stand between them? 

“Yes, Claudia passed about twelve years ago, a brain sickness. At the time, her son showed no indications of being anything other than human, so I didn’t see any reason to stick my nose into their affairs.” Another pointed look is thrown at Derek, who just climbs into the backseat as she backs away, plastering himself to the side of the younger boy, who curls into his warmth with another adorable little noise. 

“We are going to have to talk about this, Derek.” Talia informs her son, who is suddenly studying the laces of his shoe with far more interest than they warrant. She huffs a bit of a sigh at her son’s cagey attitude, but slides into the drivers seat regardless, trying to figure out how she wants to word this next bit. 

“Derek, honey,” She catches his eyes in the rearview mirror before she puts the car in reverse. “You know that I will love you no matter what right? You are my only son, there is very little that you could do that would change how much I love you.” She may have laid it on a bit thick, because now he just looks confused, but she knows her heart was steady through her little speech, so he should know it as the truth it is. 

“Um, yeah, I know. Thanks mom.” Either Derek just became the master in evasion of difficult topics or she was missing something. 

“Well, just one thing before we go. Where are all his clothes?” She decides that blunt is the best way to go, it almost never steers her wrong with her ornery son, but today is a day of surprises, because instead of all the flustered posturing and deflecting, Derek just replies with a shrug, “He took them off while running. Made it harder for me to track him because his scent stuck to his clothes but not to him.”

Well. Actually, now that she thinks back on it, Claudia had been able to do something similar, she had always dampened her scent to make her less noticeable. It was the only way she could sneak up on an alpha werewolf, and took great delight in making Talia scream in surprise nearly every time. 

A pang of nostalgia shoots through her at thoughts of her old friend, but a glance at her backseat shows her the gentle way Derek treating the smaller boy, how he adjust the seatbelt so it doesn’t choke him when his head rolls with the swaying of the car and how he stays close to share his supernatural heating, because now that she thinks back, Claudia didn’t run hot the way wolves do. 

She thinks that her friendship with Claudia might just carry on to the next generation, and it warms her heart a little bit. Not that she wouldn’t have been fine with the boys being in a relationship, as she thought they were earlier. Omega-omega relationships were not unheard of, as well as other like-rank relationships, just rare. 

Her thoughts distract her until she pulls up to the bustling police station in the center of the town. Sparing a glance at the state of dress the younger boy is in, not to mention her son, she just asks Derek to stay in the car with him while she goes in and talks to the Sherriff, Claudia’s widower. 

She never really interacted with the Sherriff in anything other than a professional setting, as they were never close when Claudia was alive, but she hopes he won’t think the worst of her son for the circumstances of this afternoon. 

A deputy directs her to the back of the station, where Sherriff Stilinski is eating a hamburger while surveying the surrounding bullpen, like someone is going to try and take his food right out of his hands. He straightens up when he sees her, pushing back his chair and wiping his hands and face on a napkin, surreptitiously sliding the half eaten burger into a drawer and closing it. 

“Mrs. Hale, what can I do for you today?” He asks, and she gets right to business, not sure if she wants to know why he acted like someone was going to take his burger from him.

“My son found a boy while patrolling our borders today, a boy with fox traits. Would he happen to be yours?” The horror, worry, defensiveness and then acceptance flash over the man’s weathered features in rapid succession, food seemingly forgotten.

“Brown hair, brown eyes, tall and skinny?” He asks in a tired, resigned voice and his eyes fall shut at her nod. “Yeah, he’s mine. I apologize for whatever he did, he just recently grew into his fox and presented as an omega, we- I mean I was so sure the gene skipped him. Whatever he did, I am sure it wasn’t meant in malice, or threat, he just doesn’t think things through sometimes, and I am so sorry for whatever trouble he caused-“

She stops his rant with a quick laugh and a hand gesture. “Oh, no, sorry Sherriff, he isn’t in trouble, he didn’t do anything wrong. In fact, it’s the opposite, I have to apologize on behalf of my son, who may have overstepped his bounds in dealing with him. My fault entirely for the misunderstanding, I didn’t word that quite right.”

Relief shines through the man and he slumps to his seat, offering his own chuckle. “Be that as it may, I wouldn’t put it past Stiles to do something to offend the local pack inadvertently. He can be a bit… willful.” He gathers himself up once again, and Talia has to admire the nearly spastic way the man delt with the information, having such strong reactions yet having the wherewithal to hold most of himself back and look at the situation from a professional view. 

“Well, you don’t seem too worried yourself, so I assume he isn’t hurt?” Sherriff Stilinski hedges, and she nods in the affirmative. 

“Mie- um, that is, Stiles,” She stutters a bit, never actually having successfully said the boys real name and glad for the easier moniker. “Is physically fine, if a bit tired. He actually goaded my son into chasing him, and nearly gave him the slip if Derek is to be believed. His methods were… unorthodox, however and he lost all his clothes in the effort, and he must have rolled in mud to cover up his fur to better stay hidden.” She lets her admiration of his actions bleed through her words and the Sherriff positively shines with pride. 

“Again, I am sorry for trouble, but thank you for letting me know. I take it Stiles is here…?” The man looks around her, peeking through the slatted shades to look for his wayward son. 

Talia shifts in her seat, and clears her throat, and his attention snaps to her once again. “He is actually in the car with Derek, I thought that best for the moment. They are both in a state of undress due to the events of the afternoon.” The sheriff nods in understanding and the remaining tension in his shoulders bleeds out. 

“Good thinking. I’m glad he ran into Derek and not some stranger out there,” The man shakes his head in exasperation and fondness, something Talia doubts is rare in regards to the young fox. “I told him to bring his best friend along with him for these ‘practice runs’ or whatever, but he continues to ignore me.” 

Talia tilts her head. “He… he does know that the run is not a competition or race, right?” It has been a communication problem in the past, usually with bitten weres who hear ‘run’ and assume it’s a charity event or something. 

“Oh, he knows.” The Sheriff answers enigmatically. “He stays up half the night on that damned computer of his looking up stories and personal accounts of people who participated in them. Got it into his head that only the best of the best deserve to catch him, so he started his own little ‘training program’.” His words are laced with pride and fondness, despite the harsh way he says them. 

Talia gives a small smile and nods in understanding. It is not unheard of for some participating omegas to put a little more effort into the chase, to make it more interesting. That way only alphas and very rarely betas, that are invested in finding a mate will chase them.

“By the way, I saw that Derek is signed up for this year?” The sheriff inquires, his own curiosity just as boundless as that of his son.

The alpha nods in confirmation. “Yes, I had him signed up. Any more moping on his part is going to end up doing more harm than good, I fear.” Her nerves at the prospect of anything happening to her only son must shine through her attempted mask of indifference, because the sheriff gets a gleam in his eye that immediately puts Talia at full attention, the alpha even going as far as scooting an inch or so forward in her seat. 

The sheriff doesn’t miss these details and leans a bit over his desk, lending the illusion of even more privacy past the soundproof walls and tinted one way windows of his office. “As the Sheriff of this town, and one of the appointed overseers of the run, I have access to the files on every participant. As you know, Stiles is running this year too, so it is extra important that we make doubly, perhaps even triply sure that all the participants are… up to snuff, to put it to words.” He hedges, and the pair share a rather evil grin. 

“It wouldn’t be out of the ordinary to review the list of runners just to be sure, and if we happen to catch any… undesirables that slipped through the system, well, we would be doing good work to cutting them out, wouldn’t you say?” She adds, catching on to his plan rather quickly. 

Alpha Talia Hale reaches out a well-manicured hand to Alpha Sheriff Stilinski, who takes it in a firm grip and they shake once, matching evil grins still plastered on their faces.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I edited like three misspelled words in this and called it a day lol. Not much to fix in this one. I have never liked any of that YN fanfiction where its supposed to be you interacting with the characters, but I couldn't help but write myself into a very minor and unimportant background role, like my own personal Stan Lee cameo in the marvel movies. Kudos to you if you figure out which one is me!

“ACHOO!” 

“Gross! You got snot dripping from your nose!” Derek complains, shooting to the other side of the car, causing Stiles to nearly face plant on the leather cushions, given how he was using Derek as a personal heater, blanket, pillow, and structural support for his leaning frame. 

“I’m sorry! I run cold! Doesn’t your mom have any tissues in here?” Stiles gripes, searching for anything to wipe his nose on that wouldn’t get him flayed for doing so. “What could possibly be taking our parents so long anyway?” He mumbles, fully aware that Derek can still hear him. 

Locating a travel sized tissue box, Derek hands it over to the sniffling fox, and making sure he is snot-free before sidling up to him once again. The touch grounds him, makes him feel relaxed, strange as it is that someone so full of nervous energy could bring about such a sense of calm. 

A glance at the serene set to the boys face, muscles lax and lounging, body free of any nervous twitches or ticks lets Derek know that it is a two way street, and he seems to be affecting him as much as the other way around. 

Derek is usually content to stay quiet and use as few words as possible, but even he is feeling a bit overwhelmed with the constant inane chatter Stiles spews forth. Snippets of topics he managed to pick up on were comic books, movies, music, and outdated medical practices, but before he could contribute any of his own thoughts on the topic, some other thought would cross Stiles mind and he would be left in the dust as the young fox prattled on about a new subject. 

It was a little exhausting to listen to, but the emotion in the forefront of Derek’s brain was grudging admiration. This is one omega who does not conform to any of the silly stereotypes and cookie cutter ideals of the ‘perfect omega’ or other such nonsense that some archaic alphas still try to push on them. 

Omega rights has gone pretty far in the past hundred years or so, and there is now next to nothing that omegas can’t do that a beta or alpha can. But as always, there is a certain mindset that people have when they think of omegas. 

Stiles is breaking all of them, and Derek doesn’t even think the boy is trying to make a statement with it. He is far from quiet, and demure is not a word that would come to mind when faced with his expressive face and flailing arms, which he uses to make his points in his endless arguments against a nonexistent force. He is tall, and while he may be thin, Derek knows there is a lithe set of muscles on the kid, there have to be for him to run like he did earlier. 

When Stiles finally stops talking for more than a few seconds, Derek asks the question that has been on the tip of his tongue since he caught the little fucker. 

“Why are you participating in the run if you don’t want to be caught?”

The silence in the enclosed space is deafening, and Derek regrets opening his mouth when the small body goes taunt and pulls away from him. A small whine leaves Derek unbidden, and he fights his instinct to reach out and comfort his friend. 

Hold up. Hold the phone, slow the fuck down. 

Derek Hale doesn’t have friends. He did in the past but after the … he just didn’t now. And this spunky little omega, who he has known for approximately half a day, most of that time spent in pursuit of him, is not the exception to the rule, great cuddle skills and magical relaxing presence aside. 

He glares as his hand, willing the claws to retract and they do, but it brings no satisfaction. He almost jumps when Stiles talks, nearly forgetting that he asked the kid a question. 

“Well, I know that I am not exactly a catch as far as omegas go.” He says it with just a hint of self-deprecation and Derek frowns when he cant catch his eyes, Stiles more interested in studying the fabric of the seat in front of him. “I’m loud, obnoxious, and I smell funny, and I never grew up with any of it, so I don’t really know much about how any of it… works.”

Derek concludes the boy must be talking about his heats and his anatomy, and holds back a grimace at how painful and confusing his maturity must have been at such a late stage in his growth. Heedless of Derek, Stiles forges on.

“Plus, I am a fox, and there aren’t exactly a whole lot of foxes in the area, well, ones that possess a human sense of sentience that is, and even if I were to go somewhere else, there is no set area that foxes gather, not like wolves or other weres that hold territories. Foxes are wanderers, but even in that aspect I’m weird, because I don’t want to wander, I don’t want to leave my dad, and my- my mom is here, and I can’t leave her.” 

His voice breaks on the last word and Derek gives in to the need to hold him and wraps his arms around the trembling figure, chest rumbling in the foreign sensation of the omega comfort purr, something Derek never thought he would produce, but he is glad he can, because Stiles goes boneless in his hold and his scent loses most of the tangy bitterness of sadness and desperation. 

“You don’t have to run, though.” Derek hedges, voice pitching oddly in reaction with his rumbling. “If your dad is making you-“ 

That was the wrong thing to say, because Stiles tries to worm out of his hold, but Derek just holds him firm, purring louder. “Sorry, sorry, I’m not the most… delicate when it comes to talking about these kinds of things. I just meant to say that mom could get you out of it if you asked.” 

His relief is palpable when Stiles goes still again, and Derek hasn’t felt so at peace with himself and the world since before… since before Kate. His purr stutters a bit as he forces the memories back, and nearly crushes Stiles ribcage when his mother and the sheriff tap on the window to get their attention. 

“OOF! Derek!” Stiles complains in a very high pitched whiney voice.

Derek glares at him in annoyance at the reedy sound, but lets go, smirking as Stiles faceplants into his chest before managing to catch his balance. 

“That was on purpose, you meanie! DAD! YOU SAW THAT RIGHT?!” Stiles yells at the window, unbothered by the way the man already has the bridge of his nose pinched between his thumb and forefinger in the pose of ‘fed-up-with-Stiles-shit’.

Derek flinches away from the loud yelling and lightly cuffs the back of his head. “They can hear you just fine, no need to yell, dumbass.” The glint in Stiles eyes is less than reassuring.

“DAD!”

“WHAT DID I JUST SAY-“

Before they could dissolve into further argument, the door is wrenched open and Derek is pulled from the car by his arm by his mother, who looks more amused than angry. Feeling more childish than he has in a long while, Derek sticks his tongue out at the gloating fox perched in the doorway of the car, and his lips twitch a little at the scandalous gasp he receives in return. 

The Sheriff lets out a loud sigh that sounds more theatrical than anything and Stiles pouts, but sits back with a small huff in a show of obedience. “Stiles, I just ask that you behave while the Hales here drive you home. I will be done with my shift in a couple hours, and then we will have a nice long chat about going out on your own and trespassing.” 

Stiles takes a breath to whine, but stops short, then takes another long inhale, and Derek hears the Sheriffs heart skip a beat. He looks at his mother, who looks to be just as confused as he is.

“Dad, why does it smell like you ate a burger?” For an omega, and one so young, at that, Stiles emits an aura of discipline and authority for such an innocuous question. 

Talia at once understands the odd behavior the Sheriff displayed in regards to his lunch earlier, and holds back a laugh, especially when she sees the Sheriff pale a little in the face. 

“Well, see you at home, son.” He deflects lamely and walks right back through the doors to the station with his head down while Stiles yells at his back.

“HEY! DAD! DON’T THINK WE WONT TALK ABOUT THIS!” Stiles yells at the retreating back of his father, and looks pleased at how the officer on the front desk tells him a, ‘told you’ as the man makes his way back to his office. 

Stiles exchanges a nod with the officer and Derek has to strain his ears to pick up the Sheriffs grumbled, “Who’s the parent in this relationship?” and then a louder, “Parrish! You get meter-maid duty tomorrow for that!” 

The Hales climb back into the car and drive Stiles back to his house, and if Derek and Stiles spend the time cuddling in the backseat, well, no one has to know. 

Except his mother, who Derek has already caught taking pictures of them when she thinks they aren’t paying attention three times now. He will definitely need to delete those later. 

As soon as Stiles is in his house with the door closed and locked behind him, plus an extra minute of making sure he got settled all right, Talia eases the car back onto the road and begins to drive home. 

The long way.

Derek groaned from his spot in the passenger seat, where he moved when Stiles got out of the vehicle, and pressed his forehead against the cool glass of the window in an effort to avoid the conversation.

“So Stiles seemed nice.” His mom starts and he lets out another groan, which she chooses to laugh at, the evil woman. “I admit, at first glance when you brought a naked boy to the house, I figured you were going to introduce me to a boyfriend.”

That gets Derek to look at her. “Boyfriend? Mom, Stiles is- so that’s what you meant earlier!” The strange declaration of unconditional love from his mother when they first started driving struck Derek as odd, and now he understands what she meant. “I’m not interested in omegas, Mom.” Derek tells her, and goes back to looking out the window.

“I’m relieved. Not that I have anything against like-status relationships, but I know that with the way they are viewed in society, that life is harder for them, to get a job, to have respect from all their peers, and it’s so archaic the way society views omegas already, but anyway. I want you to have the best life there is, and if you do end up deciding you are interested in omegas, then I will give you all the love and support I have given you growing up. Never doubt that, Derek.” She says this last part with finality, and although Derek is pretty sure he is into alphas, part of him feels soothed that his mother would still be on his side should he change his mind. 

“Thanks, Mom.” He says quietly, still unable to look at her, but needing to show that he heard and understood, and was grateful. 

They drive in comfortable silence for the rest of the way, but his mom doesn’t turn off the car when park in the drive. As much as Derek wants to retreat to the comfort of his bedroom, he forces himself to turn and look at his mother, who appears to be deep in thought. 

“Uncle Peter is coming to town.” She says carefully, gaze trailing over her family home, a three story gargantuan home that can house the whole pack, if needed. This is the house that Talia grew up in, and she was an only child for so long, in her senior year of high school when Peter was born. 

Derek grew up with Uncle Peter in the house, his presence more ‘older brother’ than uncle. It was Peter who would always sneak him an extra cookie when his mom said that he could only have one, it was Peter who babysat for him and his two sisters. 

Peter was also the one who wasn’t here when Kate happened. He left after he graduated high school, walked across the stage with his diploma and got on a plane to Rome that same day, off to explore the world and make his fortune. 

Derek remembers when Peter left, it was about fifteen years ago. Cora was the most affected by it, crying for weeks after he had gone, and waking up at all odd hours of the night to talk to him whenever he had a moment to call. 

Eventually, the calls turned into once a month occurrences, then turned into letters, and up until now, they only received word of him about four times a year. It wasn’t that he didn’t care for them anymore, it was just the distance taking its toll. That’s what Derek liked to tell himself. 

“Does he know?” He eventually asks, realizing his mother was waiting for his response. It’s a loaded question, could mean any number of things, but they both know what he’s talking about. 

“He knows Kate killed Laura, and a little bit about what she did to you.” His mother replies hesitantly. It doesn’t stop the full body flinch Derek does when he hears his older sisters name. 

“It wasn’t your fault Derek.” Talia raises her voice and adds a little bit of alpha inflection to it. A small part of the glacial sized guilt crushing him melts away at her words, like it does every time she tells him. With time, maybe he can even believe her. 

“Ok.” He chooses to say, opening the door and fleeing the car, heading out to the woods instead of going back inside. 

Talia watches her son jog into the forest, saddened that her son carries such a heavy burden on his shoulders. Cora eventually comes out to the car, leaning on the drivers side door and sticking her hand through the window to rest on her shoulder. 

“He’s still healing, mom” She tells her, and Talia grips her daughters hand tight in her own. The touch helps ground her. 

“Did you hear what I said?” Talia asks, she hadn’t known Cora was home and had wanted to break the news more gently to her. Her expression hardens and Cora gives a single nod, looking towards the forest with a little bit of longing in her eyes.

Huffing a humorless laugh, Talia lets go of her hand and gestures to the tree line. “Go on, blow off some steam. Plenty of room for two young wolves to brood.” Her teasing has the desired effect, a corner of Cora’s mouth turning up before she gives her mother an exaggerated eye roll and takes off, going in the opposite direction of her brother.

Talia shuts off the car and moves to where she was seated on the porch before Derek brought Stiles to her. Her lemonade has long since gone warm, the ice all melted and diluting the beverage. Peter’s most recent letter sits within the magazine she left it in, untouched by her nosy children. 

It smells like her brother, but carries a hint of unfamiliarity to it, probably because of the alpha spark he somehow acquired while traveling the world. Just another thing to worry about, she supposes. 

Peter Hale doesn’t particularly enjoy flying. 

Something about the pressurized cabin filled with far too many other people, the noises from other people, and the smells that come with them. Not to mention the deafening roar of the engines. 

As with everything, Peter doesn’t settle for anything less than the best, so he is in first class, able to stretch out a little and try to focus on anything other than the sound of the two engines keeping him and around a hundred strangers from falling to their death. 

He chooses to listen in on the cute beta stewardess currently gossiping to her coworkers about him.

“Meg, I swear to god, I can see every contour of his chest through his shirt. I went over to refill his glass and I nearly spilled champaign all over him!” She stage whispers, and to any other patron she would go unheard, but to an alpha werewolf, she might as well have said it to his face. 

“Erin,” The other stewardess gasps. “You didn’t.” 

“I didn’t, but it was a close thing! God, I want to climb him like a tree. Did you see his hands? God, imagine-“ The ding of a service bell goes off and the stewardess, Erin apparently, is all professional composure, aside from a small flush in her cheeks, as she walks past him to answer the call. 

Maybe he’ll get her number after the flight. See if she is staying in California for a little bit before her next job.

When the flight lands, Peter doesn’t get her number, as she was assigned to help guests in the peasant class get their bags down from the overhead. Shame, he thinks to himself. She was cute in that girl-next-door type of way. 

No one is waiting for him in the airport, not that he was expecting anybody. He didn’t tell his sister when or where he was flying in, only that he was coming home soon. Picking up his luggage, Peter calls a private cab service to pick him up. 

For living on the move for so long, Peter has mastered the art of packing light. He takes three outfits, his essentials such as toiletries and such, and whatever book he is reading. In his carry on, he has his business ledgers and his laptop, along with a tablet loaded up with scans of the latest tome he acquired while traveling through the alps. 

The car picks him up outside and within an hour of landing, Peter is out of the airport, glad to have such a hassle-free flight. He ends up having the driver take him to a specialty car dealership, where he picks up the car he ordered for himself. 

The driver of the cab watches slack-jawed as the mechanic rolls out the Shelby 1000 Cobra, one of only a hundred in the world.

Peter actually owns two of them.

The other one is in his warehouse outside of Beacon Hills that he had built when he got into his business of acquiring and selling priceless artifacts. Turns out, Peter is pretty good at putting a price on priceless items, and those prices tended to be pretty high. Half of what he makes goes to Talia and her children and the pack, even when he became an alpha. 

After inspecting the vehicle and finding not a single fault, he pays and tips his driver handsomely, privately glad the guy was there so Peter had someone to gloat to. His pride will likely be his downfall someday, but that day is not today. 

The mechanic shakes his hand and Peter keeps the business card passed over to him, happy with the mans work in prepping the vehicle for him. 

Peter narrowly avoids taking out a headlight when he forgets to drive on the right side of the road and tries to pull out straight into oncoming traffic, but a sharp honk from the beat up pickup truck has him swerving back into his rightful side of the yellow dotted line. It is probably the universe getting back at him for showing off to the driver, because if that’s not it then its his fault, and Peter does not like the thought of that. 

After his near accident, Peter gets acclimated to driving on the other side of the road again. The past year he spent Ireland makes all the roads feel wider and more …urban. Definitely a long shot from the narrow, wild trails that constituted as roads in the hills and mountains of rural Ireland, that’s for sure. 

Less sheep, too.

His car drives like a dream, and the light purr of the engine is music to his ears, which still have a dull ring to them after seven hours of sitting on top of two giant jet engines. If teleportation didn’t take human sacrifices to operate, Peter would pay top dollar to the mage that set up that shop. 

Beacon Hills is nearly identical to what it was ten or so years ago, when he left. The same tacky storefronts on the main roads, the northeast corner of the town still has the sprawling, rich houses of the wealthy, and the south end of town still held the trailer park surrounded by rundown homes of the less well off. The movie theater is still the only open business in the plaza it sits in, and, to Peters surprise, the same shitty take out place he liked to order from is still running, and if the group of kids weren’t loitering at the corner and drooling over the sight of his car, he thinks he would have gone in and picked up a menu.

He drives around town and puts together a new perspective of it to replace his old one. There is a new playground and accompanying sports park with a baseball diamond and some soccer fields in what used to be an unused lot for sale, a new bowling alley opened up in the lot across the street from his favorite diner, which got an expansion in the form of a new, outside seating area. Near the center of town, some new apartment buildings surround a nice park with a large pond, paved walking paths all throughout.

His destination lays on the edge of the busy part of town, close enough for him to be able to reach the diner and grocery store by foot with a short walk, but far enough away that the noises don’t bother his sensitive hearing. 

He doesn’t want total silence, though, like the house he grew up in, the pack house. The sound of crickets and wind blowing through the trees is soothing to some extent, but it reminds him of how lonely he was growing up in the giant house with just his mother and father. 

He shakes his head as he parks in the private garage he had refurbished along with the building. He takes his luggage out of the trunk and makes his way over to the sleek and shiny elevator doors, decidedly not thinking about his childhood. 

The building has ten floors, all empty at the moment, but in condition to be filled. Peter, of course, had the entire top floor reconstructed, so he could have the whole floor to himself. On the nine other levels, there are four apartments per floor, each with three bedrooms, one and a half bathrooms, a full kitchen and a large living room. 

Peter has two bedrooms, a study, a library, two full bathrooms, a full kitchen with an island, an entertainment room, a lounge and a very spacious living room. Fully furnished beforehand, so he could make his move that much easier. 

The ride to the top floor is a bit nerve wracking for Peter, who is a bit jetlagged and out of sorts due to the time difference, and he hopes that his new place doesn’t smell like new paint and sterile cleaner. 

The doors open to a sort of waiting room style area with the door to his new apartment straight ahead. The keys are under the left fern, just like he told the contractor to tell the interior designer, and the click of his lock mirrors the jump of his heart as he opens the door to his new home. 

The spaciousness of the area settles him a bit, the setting sun through the large windows bathing the area in an orange glow. He takes off his shoes and leaves them on the mat next to the door, making sure to lock it behind him, not anyone can get into the building right now anyway, but it’s a habit he developed after his one neighbor in Kyoto kept coming into his apartment at night after too much sake, thinking it was his. 

As he pads across the plush carpets draped over the floors, Peter realizes that he can barely smell anything. Not in any sort of bad way, but there is not overpowering smell of new furniture, or paint or cleaning product. It’s just, sterile. A blank canvas for Peter to make what he wishes on. 

And what Peter wishes is to touch everything and make it smell like him. But before he can start touching and rubbing against things to scent them, he needs to wash out the scents of the day that got on him in his travels. 

He makes his way through the whole place to get a feel for where things are before he goes to the master bedroom, opening the drawers real quick and making sure his clothes were put away properly. After that, he strips off his layers and drops them into the empty hamper by the foot of his California king bed and strolls into the adjourning master bath.

There is a raised jacuzzi tub next to a glass walled shower, and he almost goes with the jacuzzi before another wave of exhaustion hits him, and steps into the shower. 

He cleans just enough to get the smell of others off him and steps out onto the ultra plush bathmat, appreciating that he doesn’t have to step on cold tile just yet as he fluffs a towel through his hair. 

A glance in the large mirror across the shower startles a huff of laughter from him at his appearance. He looks crazy and just a little bit feral, if he is being honest. Because no one is with him, he flashes his eyes and brings out his fangs and claws, hunching dramatically in front of the mirror and makes a very fake sounding growl. 

The gesture feels a bit empty with no one there to laugh with him. 

He shakes his head again to clear his mind. He must be really tired if he is starting to feel lonely. Peter Hale doesn’t feel lonely, he is a lone wolf, pardon the pun, he flies solo, he is a loner by nature. He doesn’t need anyone to laugh with him in the bathroom mirror while he makes funny faces.

He puts his fangs and claws away, the joke over. 

Feeling a bit hallowed out, and blaming it on the jetlag, Peter tiredly runs his hands over as many things in the bedroom as possible before falling into bed, rolling on top of and then under the sheets to get his scent on as much of them as possible. 

Touching and rolling on things can only go so far in getting them to smell like him, though. The only way to truly get the place to smell like him is to spend time in each room, let the smell of him naturally saturate his surroundings. 

It takes a while, but eventually, after enough tossing and turning, Peter is able to get a few hours of restless sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

Sunlight filters through the blinds at the perfect angle to blind Stiles just as soon as he opens his eyes. With a yelp and some flailing, he manages to relocate to the floor, and decides to call it a win, now that he can see again. 

“Morning, son.” His dad says from his doorway, voice full of mirth. 

Stiles eyes the mug of coffee in his fathers hands with a new understanding of how Thorin must have felt when Bilbo took the Arkenstone. “For me?” He asks, and even goes to make grabby hands like a toddler, which he will deny at a later date, but for now he is filled with an insatiable greed for hot bean water. 

The evil grin on his fathers face tells him all he needs to know, and Stiles dramatically throws himself back onto his bed with a groan. “Worst. Dad. Ever.”

“Love you too, Stiles. Maybe try not to trespass on pack property today, huh?” His dad teases, and the pair share a soft look that speaks of fond affection. They care for one another deeply, though they may show it through less than conventional means. Namely, torture through coffee withdrawl.

As his father walks out the door, he yells over his shoulder, “I left some on the pot for you!” And snickers at the responding series of crashes that follow as his boy races down the stairs. 

Truthfully, Sheriff Stilinski isn’t scheduled to work today, but Talia had sent him a message about going through the participants of the run, and putting that task behind him will be one less thing to stress about.

Heaving a great sigh, Stiles sets down his empty mug on the counter. His head itches with the urge to shift, he longs for the comfort that comes with having his ears and tail out. Having extra appendages to twitch and move actually helps to lessen the ADHD symptoms he has, but he does understand that he needs to learn to control his shift. 

Humans may know about the supernatural now, but tolerance is still pretty low for walking down the street while shifted. People will always fear that which they do not know, and the threat of being hunted for what you are is less now, but still there. 

Some research into his heritage led him to find a journal from a fox shifter living in Poland, and luckily someone translated it to English. The contents were horrifying to the young fox, how people used to hunt them down religiously and when they were caught, they were forced to shift so they could be skinned for their fur.

Stiles hasn’t managed a full shift into a fox, doesn’t quite know if he wants to anyway. Other than green, flashing eyes, he would be mistaken for a real fox, and the last thing he wants is for some farmer to shoot him or to end up as roadkill on the highway. 

He debates reading further today, but the stillness of the house is already starting to get to him, the urge to be outside growing stronger with every passing moment. 

He trots back up to his room and gets out some light running clothes, snagging his phone from his nightstand as he lays them on his rumpled bed. 

He shoots a quick text to Scott, asking him if he wants to go for a run, which the big goof is usually up for, especially if it involves a play-chase. Before Stiles presented as a fox and an omega, he and Scott would go the ‘hidden fields’ and Stiles would let Scott chase and tackle him for hours, just letting out energy and wrestling in the grass. 

His lips curl downward when Scott texts back that he is busy helping his mom paint the bathroom today. It’s not that Scott is lying, but the Alpha werewolf seems hellbent on renovating every room of his house this summer, leaving very little bro time. He knows it isn’t him, he made sure to ask Scott straight out if him being an omega or a shifter was a problem and he knew Scott wasn’t lying by how he paled and stuttered out that Stiles was his bro for life, and nothing would change that, but a part of Stiles still feels like Scott is doing it on purpose. 

He quickly changes his clothes and goes to grab the keys of the jeep, only to realize that he never drove it home yesterday, because of the whole Derek Hale thing. 

Wait just a second, Derek Hale! He can totally go and get some awesome training and even better cuddles from the surly omega. First, he has to get his jeep though, and sighs as he puts on actual shoes to run on the pavement with. He likes to run barefoot when in the woods, but running through town without his shoes is just asking for him to step on some broken glass or with his luck, a stay heroine needle. 

Shoes on and phone in pocket, Stiles starts his journey across town to the preserve parking lot, to pick up his jeep. From there, he will drive up to the Hale house and bug Derek to hang out with him.

Derek groans as he closes the book he was reading and flops down on his bed. The knocking on his door is incessant, and every time he thinks whoever is there will finally give up and leave him alone, it just starts up again. The clock by his bed shows him that its been five whole minutes, and the knocks have not faltered in the least during this time. 

The only other person home right now is Cora, but she has a distinctive knock, and never knocks twice. The person on the other side of Derek’s door has already knocked through the beats of three pop songs and is well on the way to the second verse of a fourth. From the banging, it sounds like they are even using their feet to beat out the rhythm, and Derek has to concede that they are probably not going to stop anytime soon.

He stalks across his room and wrenches the door open, only to end up with an armful of Stiles, who seems to have been knocked off balance at the loss of his instrument. 

Derek doesn’t even rock backwards at the impact, just blinks as the omega uses his chest as a springboard to bounce back to his feet. 

“Hey dude! Wanna go for a run? I can chase you this time if you want!” Stiles asks, already brushing past the stunned wolf to stand in the middle of his room. “Wow, pretty spartan in here, huh?” He looks around at Derek’s décor, and the wolf huffs a little bit, defensive.

“I don’t need a lot of stuff.” He grumbles and Stiles nods sagely, like Derek just spit some wisdom or something. “Wait, how did you get in the house?”

Cora peeks her head in and grins manically. “Oh, I let him in. He said he was your friend and wanted to see you.” It was meant to tease him, the tone of her voice implied as much, but Stiles looks completely serious as he affirms what she said.

“Yup, I should have gotten your phone number yesterday, but it was kinda hectic, so I never go the chance to ask.” He pulls his own phone from the pocket of his shorts and hands it over to Derek so the man can type his number into a pre-made contact with the name ‘Sourwolf’.

After changing it to Derek and typing his number in, Derek hands the phone back, and it doesn’t even hit him, what he just did, how he just let Stiles barge into his life again, how he made a fucking friend for the first time in nearly two years, until Cora makes a choking sound from the doorway, face slack with shock.

Giddy with the chance to have one over his sister, Derek levels her with a look. “Don’t you have anything better to do than bother me when I have a friend over?” She can’t even respond, her mouth moving like a fish out of water as Derek closes the door in her face. He cant even remember the last time he left Cora speechless, and the euphoria from that alone distracts him from the fact that he just trapped himself in his room with some guy he just met yesterday that showed up at his house to hang out like they were suddenly best buds. 

Turning back around, Derek finds Stiles twirling around in his desk chair, eyes sparkling with mirth. “Is this what it feels like to have siblings? I never knew I was missing out.” Derek sighs with a levity that he doesn’t feel and sits on the edge of his bed.

“I don’t usually get one up on Cora, so I couldn’t resist.” He pauses, then adds. “We aren’t friends.” 

Stiles doesn’t stop spinning, but he does slow. “Okay, big guy.”

He stiffens at the dismissal of the statement, a growl working its way out of him. “I don’t like you. We aren’t friends.” He tries, voice getting a little firmer.

Stiles is looking at him, but he never stops moving the chair. “Well that’s too bad, I already decided. My name is Stiles, my favorite food is curly fries, my favorite movie series is Star Wars, and you smell really calming to me.” He blushes scarlet at the last thing, and Derek thinks that he didn’t mean to say that one out loud.

Its enough to shock Derek, who admits, “You smell calm to me too.” And then he gets a lapful of wriggling werefox, furry ears tickling his face and bushy tail swishing audibly in the air. 

“See! Friends! I don’t know why you want to fight this, dude, it was meant to be.” Derek sighs, the sound becoming a very frequent occurrence to him, and he dubs it the Stiles effect in his head. 

“Tell anyone and I will deny it.” He settles for, wrapping his arms around the younger were, giving in to the promise of cuddles. He has denied himself physical affection for so long that the prospect of platonic cuddles is just too tempting to pass up. 

Figuring he is already in too deep, Derek goes for broke. “Were you serious when you said you would chase me?”

Stiles nods and the action makes his left ear tickle Derek’s nose, and he has to hold back a sneeze. “Mandatory cuddle time first, though big guy.”

Derek doesn’t even make a show of fighting it.  
Peter finds himself pretty settled in by the beginning of August, his apartment smells like him to his liking, and he has found trustworthy families and groups of people to rent the spaces in the rest of the building. 

There is no excuse to keep him away from seeing his sister and her children, at least not one that holds any merit. He still has to pump himself up for it, telling himself again and again how it will be like ripping off a bandage, quick and easy.

He should have known that nothing is quick and easy where his family is concerned. 

The driveway to the house is about a mile of unpaved gravel and dirt, and Peter actually drives past it after imagining what such conditions would do to his car. He goes in a loop past the drive two more times before he gets up the nerve to turn onto it, driving three miles per hour to keep any damages to a minimum.

It’s slow going, but the gravel is pretty settled down and even, and the only dirt patches were by the road, so he pushes his car a little faster until the trees thin out and the large house looms in front of him, nestled in the clearing and surrounded by walls of trees, giving the utmost privacy. 

He parks next to an SUV, probably Talia’s, and a sleek, black Camaro under the large wooden pavilion to keep any acorns, branches or bird shit to a minimum. Peter remembers watching his dad, the last Alpha, build it, handing him tools when he asked, and even getting to climb the ladder and stand on the roof to test its load bearing ability. 

A small smile curls at the corner of his mouth when he recalls how his mother looked when she saw her son jumping on a series of plywood boards stapled together and held off the ground by four, barely anchored stilts, bowing with every impact of his little feet. 

His father got chewed out for that incident for months, and Peter had to sit down for many lengthy discussions about safety, even though he was a born wolf, and could heal a few broken bones, if he ever did get hurt. 

He understands now that the healing was the problem, not the getting hurt part. If he fell and broke his arm in front of his classmates and it healed within the hour, there would be trouble. 

Movement at the door of the house snaps Peter back from his memories, and he smoothly steps out of his car as Talia makes her way down the steps. 

She is just like he remembers, with an additional couple lines near her eyes and a few more greys mixed with her thick, dark hair. He had planned for a nice handshake and maybe a one armed hug, if needed, but Talia just walks right up to him and wraps her deceptively strong arms around his torso, locking him in and buries her head in the crook of his neck, breathing him in. 

She smells the same, like jasmine and mocha, and he finds himself hesitantly hugging back, throat closing up a bit at the rather sappy reunion this is turning out to be. 

She moves away a few moments later, likely able to scent his oncoming discomfort. She always was good at reading people. 

“You look good, Peter.” She breaths, hands now resting on his shoulders.

He finds himself smiling back at her, “You too, Talia.” 

The front door opens again and a young woman steps out, stormy expression on her elfin face. “Cora?” He gapes, he knew she would grow up, especially since he was gone for such a long time, but it’s still hard to see how different she is from the image of her he has kept in his mind all this time. 

He is also under no illusions that she will be as welcoming as his sister, which is why he isn’t as crushed as he could have been when she just gives him a stiff, “Uncle Peter,” and turns on her heel to stalk back into the house. 

Talia is whipping her head back and forth between him and the door as it bangs on the frame, falling shut. 

“It’s fine, I knew she was going to be mad, I was gone for a long time and communication isn’t my strong suit. I could have done more to keep in touch. She has every right to be angry with me.” Peter is only telling half of what he thinks comprises her animosity towards him, the part about Laura too much to think about, let alone say out loud. 

He had missed his oldest nieces funeral. Nothing can make up for that. 

Talia squeezes his shoulders, giving him a nod. Letting her hands fall back to her sides, she beckons him to follow with a jerk of her head, and they make their way up the familiar porch steps. 

Peter sags into a hammock chair while Talia sits in a wicker lounge chair across from him, the creaking of the material causing both of them to wince. “I hate this chair so much because I feel like it’s going to fall apart underneath me, but it is so damn comfortable.” She explains at his raised eyebrow.

Some more tension bleeds out of him at the mundane topic, and he relaxes further into the cushions and rope, using one foot to slowly rock back and forth. He might just have to get one of these, he thinks, and the subtle smell of almonds and honeysuckle surrounds him, making his eyes close and his mouth water. 

Talia is saying something, but her tone isn’t urgent, so Peter can’t really find himself to care, too wrapped up in the delicious scent permeating the air. It’s an omega scent, and that should make Peter stop and think, as there is no reason for an omega to have been sitting here other than Derek, and Derek does not smell anything like this, Derek is family, and would you look at that, Derek is stepping out onto the porch now, posture tense and unsure, ready to run.

Peter can hear Talia’s voice picking up in volume and urgency, but it’s like water is rushing through his ears, he can’t make out any of her words. Derek is getting more and more hunched, but all Peter cares about right now is how that mouthwatering scent is pouring from the younger man, clouding the air around him so that every breath is full of honeysuckle and almonds and home.

He is growling, he can recognize the sensation in his chest, and Derek looks broken and Talia is yelling with her Alpha voice, he can feel the rumbling quality of her words, but as an alpha werewolf himself, he is no longer under any compulsion to listen to her, even if she is his older sister.

His growling cuts off with a pained whine as the realization that he is losing control, over his own nephew, who smells like sin and perfection and is Peter hard? Jesus fuck, what kind of sick piece of shit feels attraction to his own blood? 

The pained whine escapes him without him noticing, his spiraling thoughts dragging him deeper into panic, but he cant think when every breath is filled with that fucking scent.

He is halfway back to his apartment when he comes back to himself enough to balk at the situation. His phone is ringing nonstop, and he turns it off with shaking hands, his fingers growing claws and retracting them as he struggles to maintain control. 

He doesn’t even lock his car as he stumbles up to the elevator doors, nearly barreling into the young werewolf couple that recently moved into the fourth floor, ignoring their inquiries to his well being. 

He is not alright, he just felt sexually and instinctually attracted to his own nephew! His sisters son! He needs to be locked up and the key needs to be melted down and the key mold needs to be smashed to bits!

He strips his nice, new clothes off and shoves them into the trash, along with his shoes and the nice watch he just bought, groping for the smelliest thing in the kitchen and landing on the jar of pickles he had yet to open. 

He crushes the jar in his hand, reveling in the sting of salt against his torn up palm and the stench of vinegar that covers the articles and suppresses the scent that caused him to likely ruin any chance of seeing any of his family again. 

He almost doesn’t bother picking out the shards of glass buried in his skin, but decides he needs the distraction of pain and rips them out with the claws of his other hand, blood pouring from the wounds he keeps reopening. 

After that, he takes a shower and washes his whole body with the strongest body wash he owns, some cheap coconut shit that one of his tenants gave him as a gift for new neighbors or some other reason he doesn’t quite bother to remember right now. He denies himself the giant loofah, sexual devients get cheap, dollar store loofahs that take off more skin then they spread body wash.

His skin is red and smells deeply of artificial coconut after the multiple washings he gives himself. He uses the least fluffy towel in his possession, which still ends up being pretty fluffy because he never buys anything of low quality, but he doesn’t enjoy drying off as much as he would if he used the towels he usually would have.

His stomach grumbles, reminding him of the fact that he didn’t eat today due to nerves, but the thought of food makes him feel sick. He opts to just crawl into bed and let himself have the meltdown he felt coming on since he got out of his car in the parking garage.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Did some minor touch ups here! It was so fun to write Peter having a Howl level meltdown over the perceived incident. Now that I think about it, Talia basically pulled a Sophie and used common sense and cleaning to get him out of his funk lol
> 
> Made a small edit, realized that Talia had called Stiles by his name, and didn't want Peter to know that yet, so had to rewrite just a teeny bit of dialogue. New stuff coming soon!

Derek doesn’t know if he wants to see his Uncle. Cora had stalked past him a minute ago, her scent angry and betrayed and a little sad, and he knows not to bother her when she needs to work things out.

The thing is, he wants to see Peter, but does Peter want to see him? He may not have been here, but Talia said she talked to him after the whole Kate thing. 

Does he blame Derek for what happened? Is that why he didn’t come home even after hearing about how his eldest niece was killed? 

Derek thinks back to his memories of Peter and shakes his head. Peter wouldn’t blame Derek, he is probably not going to yell at him for being stupid, even though a part of Derek thinks that he should, that he deserves it. That part is getting smaller and smaller though, with the help of his mom and, surprisingly, Stiles, who pried and pried about it until Derek shoved him against a tree and then broke down and told him everything. 

Not his proudest moment. 

But Stiles didn’t judge him like Derek thought he would, instead he sat next to him in the shade of a giant redwood and told him about how his own mother died when he was ten, how the dementia ate at her brain until she didn’t even recognize him anymore, how she almost jumped off the hospital roof because she was so convinced Stiles was trying to kill her.

Then the brat declared that Derek was elevated to ‘Best Friend’ status, and knighted him with a stick he picked up off the ground.

Just thinking about that day gives Derek some inner strength, and before he can second guess himself, he pushes the door open and steps out onto the porch.

His mom has a bit of a furrow in her brow and keeps saying Peter’s name, trying to get him to pay attention, but he looks like he is in his own little world, right up until he sees Derek.

His eyes go red and he inhales deeply, a primal growl picking up from deep in his chest. Derek’s heart sinks, Peter looks nearly feral, and even now that his mom is using her Alpha voice to try and get him to calm down, it doesn’t work, because Peter is an Alpha himself. 

He can feel himself trembling, not out of fear, but out of self hatred. He deserves this. It’s his fault Laura died, Peter knows this. They both know this. 

It should have been Derek.

Just as his mom takes a step to get between them, Peter chokes on his growl, reigning in his beta shift until just his crimson eyes remain, heaving in steadily shorter, more panicked breaths. 

It’s enough to confuse Derek, who assumed Peter was going to attack him, and a glance at his mom shows her face screwed up with some mixture of fury and concern, shocked into immobility by the sudden change in behavior. 

Peter locks eyes with Derek again and before he can get any sort of read of what might be going on, Peter whines, long and anguished, slashing through the chair that Stiles always sits in and bolting for his car, peeling out of the clearing in some fancy looking sports car.

Cora finds them almost a full minute later, still standing in shock. She asks why Peter left in such a hurry. She was out back using the punching bag that Derek got her for her birthday a few years ago to blow off steam. 

Talia breaks the silence first. “I- I don’t quite know. All I said was that Stiles liked that chair because it didn’t make the horrid noise that mine does, but I don’t even know if he heard me.”

Cora looks at her mother with a dubious expression. “You let him sit in the chair that Stiles, the unmated omega about to go on his first run, has sat in for countless hours, and expected Peter, the newly minted Alpha werewolf to, what, talk about the weather and catch up?” 

The situation would be comical, if it had happened to literally anyone else. Derek blinks, thinking for the first time how he must reek of Stiles, given that they just spent the morning cuddling and watching old horror films. 

Talia looks gob smacked. “I suppose I just assumed that since he has always been an alpha that being an alpha werewolf wouldn’t change things that much.” Cora gives an eyeroll but pats Derek’s shoulder as she turns around to go back to her punching bag. “Uncle Peter doesn’t hate you, he thinks he wants to fuck you. Lighten up bro.”

Derek thinks that might be worse, and his body can’t decide if it wants to drain the blood from his face or blush scarlet.

Being the alpha of a pack with more than its fair share of teenagers, Talia should have foreseen this, and she curses herself as she dials Peters number, calling again and again until it just goes straight to voicemail, then stalking out to her SUV and muttering about ‘calling me before he comes over, even a simple text would have been nice,’ and, ‘what if Stiles had been here,’ before she remembers Derek and spins on her heel.

She walks back up the steps and wraps her son firmly in a hug. “Sorry, baby, I know you really wanted to talk to him. You would think traveling around the world would make him smarter, wouldn’t you?” She says the second part very quietly, almost to herself, but it still gets a wry smile from Derek, who is still trying to process exactly what just happened.

Seeing that Derek is as well as he can be for now, Talia makes her way back to her car and drives directly to the police station. Just so happens she has an in with the local sheriff, who might be able to give her a clue as to where her headstrong brother is hiding out and brooding. 

Angsty behavior really runs in the family, she thinks fondly, shaking her head.

Peter manages to wallow in self hatred and pity for around thirty six hours before his annoyingly tenacious sister manages to track him down. It’s not that great of a feat, he wasn’t hiding, really. The property is in his name and the records of his purchase can probably be found fairly easily if one knew where to look.

The woman doesn’t even try to knock, he can hear a grunt and a splintering of wood as she busts through the front door. If he can find the will to live, maybe the next one will be infused with mountain ash so even supernatural creatures would have to be civilized and use the door knob. 

He supposes he should be grateful she didn’t just scale the side of the building and smash a window to get in. If he were her, he would want to do as much property damage as possible to the monster that was sexually attracted to the smell of their own fucking nephew. 

He whimpers in pain at the thought of how close he was to tackling Derek, poor baby Derek, to the ground and smothering himself in that scent.

He whimpers for a different reason when the comforter he was trying to use to suffocate and overheat himself with is yanked from his bed, uncovering his sweaty, grimy body and the various snack wrappers strewn about. 

He has been living like the lowly despot he is, only getting up to relieve himself, a luxury he couldn’t make himself give up.

“Jesus, Peter.” Talia exclaims harshly, and her nose wrinkles at the stench of him. It hasn’t really been long enough for him to truly fester, like the infected wound he is upon this earth, but he has been sweating pretty heavily under that blanket for over a full day, and there is dried blood all over him where he needed to ground himself by digging his claws into his skin.

The blows he is expecting never come, and they end up staring at one another for a long moment. “If you’re here to kill me, I won’t stop you.” Peter finally rasps out, throat dry and body begging for water. 

Her posture tenses at his words, and he can tell she is angry, so he just closes his eyes and waits for the end.

The end turns out to be a gallon of refrigerated water that he had bought earlier that week, and the shock is enough to make him yelp and eject himself from his bed.

From his new position on the floor, he looks up at his sister and sees a hint of mirth in her eyes, and something snaps deep inside of him.

“I’m sorry, Talia, is this funny to you? Do you find amusement in the fact that I was a hairsbreadth away from mauling your only son, an unmated omega, right in front of you in your own home? Do you laugh at how your little brother is attracted to the scent of his own sisters child?” His voice raises in volume with each question until he is screaming at her, and he barely even has the presence of mind to be thankful that it is the middle of the day, and the odds of anyone being in the building to hear his breakdown are small.

His breathing is stuttered in panic and shame, and his claws dig deep into the meat of his thighs, bringing him back from the feral state he was headed to. 

Talia takes all of it in with a raised eyebrow and reaches into her pocket, taking out a plastic bag with what looks to be a handkerchief inside. He is still panting when she opens the bag and tosses the scrap of cloth to him, and his hand snatches it out of the air a moment before it hits him in the face. 

The kerchief is white, and soft in his clammy hand, and smells like warm baked bread and smoked wood. It’s what he remembers Derek smelling like before he left. He can’t help but bring the cloth up to his nose slowly and take another deep inhale, the subtler scent of omega catching on his senses, but not causing his body to react in any way, unlike what happened the other day.

He looks at his older sister in obvious turmoil. “What is this?” It’s a whispered question, like he can’t help but to hold out hope despite knowing that he has none.

Talia cuts right to the point, something that Peter always admired about her. No pleasantries or small talk, Talia was an alpha in every way, and always saw little reason to talk around things that needed to be said. 

“That’s what Derek smells like on a normal day. He rubbed his neck on that not two hours ago.” She pauses, anticipating that he will need a moment to take that in, which Peter gratefully utilizes to gawk at the piece of fabric.

This is what Derek smells like? Peter focuses on his body and slumps down on the end of his bed when he doesn’t find one molecule of his person attracted in any way to the smell on the fabric, relief washing over him as he drips all over his rug and bedding. Before he can even open his mouth to ask, Talia carries on. 

“Now I want you to brace yourself and smell this one,” She says, reaching into her other pocket and extracting a small bag with a blue strip of fabric inside. He holds out his hand to accept it, and she pauses a moment before she hands it over, her dark eyes searching his lighter ones, and she must find what she was looking for because she slips the plastic bag into his open hand and takes the kerchief from his other hand.

He watches as she neatly folds and seals the cloth back into the little zip lock baggie and stuffs it back into her pocket of her dress pants, which Peter just now realizes she is wearing. 

He shifts a little on the bed, aware of how he must look. He already seems to be recovering from his brief stint as ‘deplorable perverted uncle’ as he self-diagnosed himself, and he makes sure to take a deep breath and center himself before he opens the bag. 

The faint wisps of honeysuckle and almonds assault his olfactory glands and his eyes go red involuntarily, but he is able to hold back the growl and claws, and he manages to keep a steady mind, which is leagues better than the last time he was confronted with it.

Just as he is about to stuff the fabric in his face and breath it all in, the blue strip of cloth is plucked out of his fingers and sealed back up, his sisters face a mixture of smug satisfaction that he recognizes as her celebrating being right, and a hint of uncertainty, which Peter reads as her thinking of the effects of the situation, now that she is certain of the outcome.

Tamping down the growl at having the scent taken away from him, Peter asks the pressing question in the forefront of his mind.

“Who is that?”

“My chair!” Stiles cries as he races up the steps to the Hale house. It has been two whole days since Derek started to ignore him, and Stiles is not going to take that lying down.

Apparently he isn’t going to be sitting anytime soon either, given that the hammock chair he favors is cut up and dragging against the wooden boards of the porch with each gust of the passing breeze.

He holds the frayed ends of the rope lattice in his hands and sighs, or, at least he means to sigh. What comes out is a breathy moan as the heady aroma of sandalwood and alpha clog up his sensitive sniffer, and his mind goes a little hazy for a second. 

“Well, guess that confirms it.” Stiles jumps as Cora makes her presence known, coming out from the side of the house to stand in front of the porch where Stiles is sitting, though he can’t quite remember when he made the decision to do so, on the wooden floor, inhaling the faint bits of that intoxicating scent that linger along the material. 

“Huh?” He elegantly replies, not quite ready to drop the rope, but embarrassed enough to lower it from where he shoved it under his nose.

Cora snorts, and rolls her eyes, saying nothing as she turns around and jogs into the trees. Stiles would be a little affronted if he didn’t know that Cora was working through a lot of stuff right now. 

Derek told him a little bit about his uncle, how close he and Cora were, and how apparently, the man was coming back home after over ten years of being away, and how Cora was fighting with how to feel about it. 

Which was, in Derek’s way, telling him that Derek wasn’t sure how to feel about it either, but Stiles knows when to push and when to let things rest, and he repressed his urge to grill the wolf about it any further for now.

With those thoughts swimming in his head, Stiles drops the ropes and pushes himself to his feet, padding across the porch to enter the front door.

The house is quiet, and Stiles can’t hear Derek’s heartbeat, but that could just mean he is in his room, which is soundproofed, so he heads up the stairs to check. 

The door is open and the room is empty, so Stiles retraces his steps to the porch and looks out into the dense forest that surrounds the area. 

The run is next week, and Derek has been very helpful in aiding him with his self regimented training, up until this point, that is. Stiles might even have attempted to track him if the entire area didn’t smell like Derek had been running in these woods every day for the past however many years. But it did, and picking up fresh scent trails over older ones was not a skill he has honed quite yet.

His training has paid off in other ways though. Stiles can now dampen his scent, not just block it out completely, which would have made it impossible for any alpha to find him. Now he lets out just enough to tease the edge of their senses, but not so much that the alpha who is interested in the smell doesn’t have to work for it. 

He can also proudly say that he has one successful full shift under his belt, even though Derek told him that all he did when shifted was run and jump in hyper circles. He has faint memories of the time, his human mind not quite in touch enough with his fox mind to be able to interpret all of what he did.

The important thing is that he didn’t hurt anyone, and Stiles will definitely call that a win, despite what others may say.

Besides, Derek isn’t here so he can’t say anything.

Stiles deflates as the cruel reality sinks back in. Derek is avoiding him, for whatever reason, and it leaves him feeling rather hollow. He slinks back to his jeep and just sits for a while, hoping that maybe Derek will come out of the trees and apologize to him, tell him some excuse like his phone is broken or that he was kidnapped and barred from communicating.

No such luck. The sun is reaching its zenith in the sky and Stiles slips on a pair of shades and makes his way back to his house, suddenly not in the mood to go for a run. 

He spends the afternoon and evening reading stories online about how people found their match through the mating run, and even read some stories that were clearly made up but were filled with fluffy anecdotes and ended with a ‘happily ever after’.

Is it so hard to ask for his own happily ever after? Everything seems to be falling apart last minute.

He groans into his pillow, flipping over on his bed and pulling his pants and boxers down under his ass so he can comfortably let his tail out. It’s fluffy enough to cover most of him, and if his dad walks in on him, he won’t be flashing him. Not with how depressed and still his tail is, the tip reaching the very tops of his calves if he points it straight downward.

Eventually, that is how his dad finds him, face down on his bed, pants pulled down to expose his pale ass, and tail covering everything. 

“You alright there kiddo?” His dad asks, and Stiles can hear the smile in his voice, so he groans loud and dramatically.

“Hmvrythmh hm hmming hmmmmmmm,” He mumbles into the material of his Batman pillowcase, the one he shoves under the bed when he has company so he can preserve his bad boy image. Well, that is the plan, if anyone other than Scott and Derek ever come into his room.

His bed dips as his father settles down next to him, resting a comforting hand on his back. “You wanna talk about it?”

Stiles turns to his side and cuddles against his father, breathing in the comforting scent of home and safe that the man effortlessly emanates. 

“Derek is ignoring me and everything is terrible and this is the worst!” Stiles whines, aware of how childish he sounds but not really caring enough to do anything about it. 

A large hand ruffles through his hair and the Sheriff lets out a considering hum. “So he went for the classic ‘brooding alone’ approach, huh? Talia called it.”

Stiles shot up into a sitting position, and shot his hands out to steady himself on his fathers shoulders. “Wait, hold on, you know something! You know something and you didn’t tell me! What is it?” 

His father shakes his head and Stiles knows what he is going to say before he even says it. “It’s not my business to tell, kid.” And Stiles tries to give his father a little shake to show his desperation, but the large alpha, despite being one hundred percent human, doesn’t budge an inch, in both respects.

“If the next words out of your mouth are along the lines of ‘but dad’ then you can keep it to yourself.” He is smiling, but his words are firm, leaving no room for argument. Luckily, Stiles has grown up with his stubborn refusal to give information outright, so Stiles asks instead,

“Is it justifiable? The reason he is ignoring me, I mean. It’s not something stupid like he doesn’t think he deserves a friend or something equally stupid, right?” Stiles pleads, and his father heaves a sigh that says he knows what Stiles is doing, but he answers regardless.

“Yeah, it’s a family thing, all four of the Hales are having a rough time of it.” His shoulders get a determined set in them as he braces his elbows on his knees, thinking back to when Talia came into the station and asked him to search for property owned by a Peter Hale. 

He happily did so, grateful for her help in going through the lists of participants for the upcoming run with a fine comb, not something he can hand off to his deputies, because the only one who knows about the supernatural is Parrish, and he has enough on his plate. They managed to catch five alphas who had bribed their way into the event or snuck in through other means, because there was no way any of them would have passed through the preliminary filters, one even having an assault and battery charge against an omega on his record. Not only was his profile flagged and barred from participating in any race in the country, but the Druid Counsel was notified that he tried to slip past the moderators and join the race. 

Only one beta managed to raise a flag for them, but Talia had quickly grabbed the folder and told him that she would handle it personally. 

Stiles seems placated by his reassurances, so the Sheriff gets to his feet and ignores Stiles whining. “The run is in six days, dad! Who am I supposed to train with?”

Peter Hale takes his time sudsing up the big, soft loofah that he had previously denied himself, reveling in the light fragrance of the soap that he buys specially from the little shop in Ukraine that caters to the sensitive noses of the supernatural. 

Talia is helping to wash up his sheets, and he thinks back to what he agreed upon not ten minutes prior.

She told him that the tantalizing scent on the cloth belonged to Derek’s new friend, but wouldn’t say who, then made him sign a paper for his permission to be considered for something, but he was honestly so high on endorphins from not being hot for his nephew that he would have signed away his soul if it was asked of him.

Now, he regrets his spur of the moment lapse in judgment, and hurries through his shower to confront his sister. He uses his fluffiest towel, the material like a cloud against his freshly cleaned skin. He has a light robe made of a dark grey, blanket soft cloth that he wraps around himself, not out of modesty, as a wolf he didn’t have a whole lot of that in regards to his skin, but out of the need to have some form of armor, some protective layer between him and the world after being bared and raw in the wake of his misconception. 

Talia pours a liberal amount of detergent into the machine, on top of his soiled sheets and sets the washer for the longest cycle on the knobs. It’s a good call, they really do smell.

“If you don’t mind, I would like to take a closer look at those papers you had me sign earlier,” Peter drawls and how curious, his dear sister is refusing to look at him in the eye. “I was in a rather… delicate state when I signed them, and would like to know what you are getting me into.”

She wordlessly slides a manila folder out of her shoulder bag that she set on his kitchen island. The words “Mating Run” stand out across the top of all the attached pages.

Peter looks at it with contempt. “Talia, why would I participate in this barbaric event when I already have the scent of my mate filling my lungs?” And he will find this ‘friend’ or whatever of Derek’s, his inner wolf snarling and snapping at its confines. 

Before she can speak, cold dread fills him again, and he can honestly say that he has experienced more emotional outbursts in the past month than he has since he left home all those years ago. “Wait, this person and Derek…” He trails off, unable to finish the sentence without flinching. 

He already did unspeakable damage to their relationship, which was in shambles already, but he will not be taking away any bit of happiness that Derek has carved out for himself.

Talia gives a sharp shake of her head, and runs a hand through her hair. “No, it’s not like that, though that was my thought at first. They genuinely seem to be friends.” Her scent turns fond.

“They only met about two months ago, Peter, and Derek is back to using full sentences, and he even started smiling again. How many years have gone by, and I didn’t even realize he had stopped smiling until I saw it again.” Her scent turns bitter and acrid with shame and guilt, and Peter clears his throat to bring her back on topic. 

She shakes her head and averts her gaze for a moment, showing him weakness, something she had been raised to hide all her life, except in front of those who she trusts absolutely. The silence speaks volumes, and Peter sets one of his hand gently over hers in thanks and acknowledgement. 

“Well, what I am trying to say, is that he spends a lot of time at the house. He is actually a rather interesting case, a werefox, in possession of a rather strong spark. Until the start of this summer, he presented as a human beta. Unfortunately for him, when he came into his fox, I think it triggered a latent dynamic change, and he also presented as an omega around the same time.” She explains, not fully understanding it herself.

Peter lets out a gust of breath, talk about being delt a shitty hand. To come into your second gender is hard enough, especially for male omegas and female alphas, who need to grow a whole other set of organs. But to manifest as a supernatural so late in life? It’s practically unheard of, save for sirens who need to be de-virginized to come into their power fully. 

“Foxes usually present later in puberty, but it is the far end of the spectrum, even for them. He signed up for the run in the same week, though, and has been training for it all summer. It’s how he met Derek, actually.” Talia continues, pausing only when Peter interjected with a confused, “Training?”

She tries to remember what Derek told her when she asked him the same. “Yes, at first I thought he misunderstood what the Run was,” She remembers feeling panic for the poor kid, hoping he didn’t think it was some sort of obstacle course or charity event. “But he did, and he told me himself that if any alpha was going to try and claim him, they needed to be good enough to catch him first.”

Peter feels completely in sync with his wolf when he thinks about proving himself to the young omega. He may be older, but he is by no means weaker, he has experience under his belt, he can provide, he can please-

“Ok, cutting you off there.” Talia snaps with almost no bite in her tone. “I take it you put together why I did what I did? Not that you deserve it, after what you put Derek through.” She levels him with a look and after a moment, he averts his eyes. 

He does feel bad about putting his nephew through a tough time, especially after what he went through while Peter was gone. 

“I’ll make it up to him.” Peter promises, and he means it.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Little bit of Chris/Derek in this, thinking of having it be a little side romance, apart from the main Steter. Do Derek and Chris have a ship name? Because I know they are a rarepair, but I really like the ship lol. Deris? Chrek? Those do not sound pretty...

Derek sits in the woods for a long time. He hears Stiles come and go, aches to follow him and ‘puppy pile’ as Stiles named it. He longs for the comfort of his first real friend in years, but his discomfort is a small price to pay for keeping Peter away from him. 

The vision of the glowing red eyes and the vacant, primal snarls of Peter losing control just over a scent, it sends a shiver through the werewolf. He can’t even imagine what would happen if Stiles had been there. Derek will not be the reason his only friend gets hurt, or even assaulted. 

Peter must be new to alpha-hood if he reacts that way to the scent of an omega, but Derek always knew Peter would be an alpha one day. He has that air of authority around him that chafed with the instincts of a beta, and submission was always a sore spot in the past, at least from what he remembers. 

When night falls, Derek simply shifts into his wolf form and curls up under his favorite tree, a giant redwood that some dumbass ancestor planted among the oaks and elms of this forest, probably not even aware of how big it would come to be. His siblings and him used to climb it until they got above the canopy of the surrounding trees, able to see for miles and miles in any direction. 

A pleasant memory to fall asleep to.

Gunmetal and musk greet his senses when Derek rises back to consciousness, but the scent is familiar, safe. There is a warm presence nearby, and the nice smell seems to emit from there, so Derek heaves himself up to pad blearily over and flops back down right next to it, curling up tight with his back pressed firmly to the person-shaped source of heat and nice smells. 

He thinks he hears a surprised huff but he might have imagined it. What he doesn’t imagine is the large, warm hand that settles on his side, slowly stroking his sleek fur. It’s real in some inexplicable way the scent and other contact weren’t, and Derek is on his feet in an instant, towering over the startled human and just staring. 

Chris Argent sits with his legs bent, bulging the seams of his tight tactical pants, gun strewn somewhere close, but no weapon aimed at him or even a scent of fear from the human alpha. 

Derek’s wolf side really likes that the human doesn’t fear him, and Derek is at a disadvantage being in wolf form, so when he leans in to snuffle the humans neck, he is unable to resist flicking his tongue out super fast to get a quick taste.

The salty tang of sweat and the heady essence of alpha are almost enough to get him to lose control and present, but Derek reigns his control in, slowly moving back until he is back in his original spot under the giant tree. 

Chris observes him, eyes wide and hand on his neck, over the spot Derek marked licked. Derek stares back, his own eyes nearly bulging out of his skull at the blatant claim he just laid on the older alpha, who just so happened to be the brother of the person who killed his sister.

To be honest, Derek always liked Chris, even when right after the abuse and murder scandal that rocked the town, the man was like a rock in the middle of a raging river; steadfast, constant and strong. He prosecuted against Kate and helped Derek and his family to the fullest of his ability, turning his own house from a legion of hunters to a family of protectors. 

He usually avoided Derek, probably assuming that his presence would bring up foul memories or something, but the opposite is true. When Derek is around him, the world stops being such a scary, fast pace race for some indeterminable and unreachable goal, and it gives him a sense of calm he doesn’t feel with anyone else. 

Holy shit. Derek is kinda in love with the stupid human alpha who continues to sit on his ass in front of a fully shifted werewolf with that calculating stare on his face like he can see through to the real Derek if he doesn’t blink or something. 

Derek has to force himself to calm down, he could do something stupid if he panics right now. The last thing he wants is to shift to human in the middle of the woods with a predator not six feet away. 

So he thinks about what Stiles would do. Then eliminates that from the list of things to do because that kid has a talent for making situations worse than they need to be. So Derek does not go up and lick at the sizable bulge in the seat of Chris Argents tight pants, although his inner Stiles is telling him that it would taste really good, and smell even better, and if he uses just the tiny teeth between his fangs, he could probably undo the zipper and-

No, bad idea. He has only known Stiles for a few short weeks and already the kid is poisoning his mind with ideas like he deserves happiness and its okay for Derek to have things. It’s not. 

The war going on in his mind is tiring him out, and his wolf is pushing to retreat, but that would mean shifting back and he is not going to shift back in front of Chris, because the man would take one look at him and see how Derek feels, and he would leave, and Derek doesn’t want him to leave, but if he remains a wolf, who knows how long he can hold off the urge to cuddle and scent. 

His confliction draws a whine out of his throat that sounds pathetic and weak to his ears, but it spurs Chris into action. The man moves in fluid motions, brutal grace written in his every move as he picks himself up, but he telegraphs what he is about to do, so Derek relaxes a fraction. 

“Sorry Derek, I must have spooked you pretty good there, huh?” The deep baritone of his voice makes one of his traitorous ears twitch and Chris definitely notices. Instead of being an ass about it like Cora would, or Stiles if he knew Derek wouldn’t really mind, Chris slowly strips out of his giant tactical jacket, and holds it out in front of him, offering it to Derek. 

“Wish I had a pair of sweats and a tee for you but I honestly didn’t expect to find you, even though Talia did technically send me out here to do just that…” Derek really wishes he could see in color right now, because from the slightly embarrassed tone of voice, and slight rambling, he would bet good money that Chris is blushing a little bit right now. 

With the article held out to give him as much privacy as it could, Derek shifts back to human and wastes no time in wrapping himself up in the alphas jacket. Its warm, and if he brings his knees up to his chin he can drape it over them and cover most of his skin from view. It also is saturated in pure alpha musk and no mortal force on earth can stop Derek from stuffing his nose into the fabric and pulling in a deep inhale. 

Chris’s heart stutters a beat, and Derek raises his eyes to the man’s face, the sight of the older alpha with a dusting of light pink under his stubble and the tips of his ears making Derek blush as well out of empathy. 

“Ahem,” Chris clears his throat, and composes himself quickly. “Sorry, it must not be that pleasant to be smothered in alpha pheromones, especially mine, but I don’t really have anything that doesn’t smell like me.” He refuses to look Derek in the eye, instead his eyes focus to the left of his head, and it gives Derek courage he honestly didn’t think he had left to see the man being bashful.

“No, I like it. It’s calming.” He states, watching with avid attention as Chris lets out a cough to try and cover how his breath hitches. Is this flirting? Derek hasn’t flirted since high school, and a swarm of butterflies has taken up residence in his stomach, making him feel kind of floaty.

Recovering quickly, probably due to his militaristic upbringing, Chris flicks his eyes to look just off to the right of Derek’s head. “I did read a study once that investigated the calming affect alpha pheromones can have on-“

“Your scent.” Derek clarifies, interrupting the hunter mid-sentence. “Your scent always calmed me down, no matter what. It’s warm, and,” He hesitates, biting his lip, a habit picked up from the one and only Stiles Stilinski, but forces the last word out. “Comforting.” 

Chris is shocked into silence at the confession, and Derek wonders if he knows anything about werewolf courting. Feeling high on the endorphins of rendering a strong alpha speechless, Derek indulges in a little bit of light taunting. 

“Did you know that we are already at stage three of most werewolf courting rituals? One person puts the mark of intention, usually a scent mark, on the person they wish to court and if the person wishes to respond to the intention, they give something in return, usually an article of clothing with their scent on it as a sort of claim.” It’s the most words in succession that Derek has said in a long time, and part of him wishes Stiles were here to see it, but most of him likes the idea of having this moment be just with him and Chris, not like he will have many more with how bratty and annoying he must be towards the man. 

They sit in silence for a couple more moments, and Derek revels in them, drinking them up, along with the intoxicating aroma of the older alpha, committing as much of the experience to memory as possible. This is definitely going to be his ‘happy place’ for the foreseeable future.

“Calming?” Chris finally spits out, body angled fully toward Derek, giving the man his full attention. Derek takes another heavy inhale from the neckline of the jacket resting on his knees and nods silently. 

Chris is looking at him now, full on eye contact, and Derek cracks a little under the attention. Maybe he read this wrong, maybe teasing Chris wasn’t a good idea, the man is probably uncomfortable, unsure of how to treat him.

Before Derek can do anything, Chris leans into his space, crowding him up against the trunk of the tree behind him and dipping his head to bury his prickly face in Derek’s neck. 

All tension drains out of him at the pleased rumble Chris makes deep in his throat at Derek’s scent. He tips his head back to give the alpha more room and gets a quick kiss to his collar bone for it, and he reaches out on instinct to touch, to help ground him in the moment, and to feel, make sure this is really happening and not just a cruel dream.

“Alpha,” He sighs, stomach clenching in arousal when Chris pushes their bodies closer together after unfolding Derek’s legs. They are chest to chest, Derek’s thighs spread around the outside of Chris’s where the older man kneels between them. Derek can feel the hardness in Chris’s pants, can smell the alphas musky arousal, practically salivating at the thought of getting his mouth on him.

“Fuck, Derek.” Chris pants against his neck, skin red and sensitive from the rubbing of his beard. It turns pink and goes back to flawless right before his eyes, and he nearly growls at how quick his marks fade. 

“We can’t, I won’t take advantage of you,” Chris rips himself away from Derek, and Derek doesn’t think he imagines the reluctancy of it. “I won’t be like her. I can’t.”

They both know who he is talking about but Derek is tired. Tired of people treating him like shattered glass, like one touch is all it will take to reduce him to a pile of sharp, unfixable pieces.

“Stiles said I deserve to be happy.” Derek says, voice firm with minimal wavering, at least, that’s what he hopes he sounds like. “He told me that I can have nice things, that I don’t have to feel guilty about being happy, even though,” The words get stuck in his throat, and he looks desperately at Chris as his eyes start to burn with the signs of an upcoming flood. 

Chris is on him once again, but this time he embraces Derek, his big, strong arms wrapped as far around his bulky frame as they can get, breath coming in heavy as he leans into the comfort, putting a leg over the alpha to prevent him from getting away a second time. 

“Fuck, you’re right, Stiles is right, you do deserve to be happy, Derek.” Chris is whispering it into his neck and Derek takes one last leap of faith, trusting his gut on this. 

“You deserve to be happy too, Chris.”

Talia stumbles upon her son and the hunter late in the afternoon, after finishing up with Peter. She nearly faceplants into the forest floor at the sight of her son holding onto a quietly sobbing Chris Argent, face gentle in a way that she knows all too well, and petting his hair soothingly. 

She can’t smell any major distress, and before she is seen by either party, she turns around and walks back to the house. Cora is rhythmically hitting the sand filled bag in the backyard and she cocks her head in her alpha’s direction in a show of submission and acknowledgment of her presence. 

Talia gives her a pat on the shoulder as she passes, scent marking her daughter. “Lets stay out of the woods for today,” She suggests, but when she catches Cora’s defiant eyes she revises it to “Well, at least out of the southwest area. Don’t go near the tree.” She gives the back of Cora’s neck a slight squeeze to cement the authority of the command and gets a nod of acceptance in return. 

Talia makes her way to her home office on the first floor, passing countless photos of her family hung up on the walls of the hallways. Bittersweet memories that sting less and less as time goes on. 

She dials a familiar number on her office phone, but doesn’t sit in her big chair behind the desk, instead picking out an aged whiskey from her ‘Victory Cabinet’ of expensive drinks she treats herself to when she finishes a particularly hard project or celebrates a special occasion. 

“Beacon Hills county sheriffs office, how can I help you?” A tinny voice asks from her phones speaker. 

“This is Talia Hale, may I speak to Sheriff Stilinski please?” She replies, the glass neck of the whisky bottle tinking the edge of her tumbler. 

By the time she is seated in her chair behind her desk, a gruff voice calls through her phone. “Talia, you caught me just before I walked out the door, what can I do for you?”

She smiles at the slight burn of the whisky as she takes a small sip. “I am calling to official un-enroll my son, Derek Hale from the Mating Run.” Her smile widens at his obvious stuttering from the other end. 

“It would seem he and Chris have finally gotten on similar wavelengths, Sheriff.” She clarifies, and winces a bit at the harsh static sound of him sighing heavily into the receiver. “Did you tell him anything about Peter? I can’t help but wonder what made him come into our territory without a personal invitation from me, not that I mind.” 

It was no secret to around half the town, supernatural or not, that Derek and Chris were dancing around one another. Talia only made him sign up for the run in the hopes that it would spur one of them to do something, but if anything it just widened the divide. 

When Talia first figured out that Derek was interested in another Argent, she wanted to give her son a good smack upside the head to clear his mind of the idea. But as time went on and wounds scabbed and healed, Chris’s true character shone through to her, and she could not ask for a more perfect match for her son. She can only hope they can get that through their walls of misplaced guilt and unnecessary self-scarification.

A warm chuckle comes through her phone and she takes another small sip of her drink. “No, I don’t make a habit of gossiping about Hale family affairs and I doubt Chris would be one to listen even if I did.” He pauses before adding, “I did get a call from Stiles earlier this morning though, while Chris was in my office. He was calling to ask me to get him a search warrant for your place, so he could make Derek stop ignoring him. I told him that Derek was having some family troubles and that he should give him some space to work things out, and if he needed Stiles he would let him know, but you know how he gets.”

Talia does know. That boy has Claudia’s perseverance all right. And her inability to accept ‘no’ as an answer. “I apologize, I know this must be hard for Stiles.”

“No apology needed, Talia. Stiles is fine, just a bit excited for the run.” There is a bit of silence then, and a shuffling of papers before the mechanic whirl of the shredder comes through her speakers. 

When the noise cuts off the Sheriff lets her know that Derek’s file for the run was shredded and he is no longer listed under participants. They wish each other a good night just as Cora stomps past the doorway, muttering about ‘stupid pheromones stinking up the whole forest’ and has Talia smiling into her drink, nursing the last sip longer than she cares to admit, wanting this content feeling to remain forever.

It is three days before the run, and Stiles can’t even cuddle with either of his supposed ‘best friends’. Scott claims he smells funny, like sex and soda, and yeah, Stiles knows he is going into the scheduled heat for the run soon, but the hormones are just making him crave contact, and Derek is still MIA. 

Stiles is tempted to contact Chris or Allison and have one of them track the slippery omega down, but feels like that would be crossing a line, what with the history between the families and the violation of Derek’s privacy, which Stiles knows the other treasures very much. It helps that he hasn’t seen hair or hide of Chris in a couple days and Allison doesn’t come to the station all that often. 

In other news, Stiles can harness enough magic to create a ball of light that can illuminate his entire room in the middle of the night. He knows this because he woke up thinking it was daytime only to realize that there was an imitation of the fucking sun levitating over his face at two am last night, and he panicked for over an hour trying to get it to go away before he calmed down and managed to read the spell that summoned it, a spell he was reading before bed and must have mumbled in his sleep, and said the words in reverse. The ball of light popped out of existence and Stiles was left blind to wander back to his bed so he just stayed in his desk chair all night and didn’t get any more sleep.

He couldn’t even brag about his magical might to anyone other than Scott and his dad, which wasn’t even a problem before he met and forcibly befriended Derek, but he must not have friended hard enough because now Derek hates him and wishes he would stay away and never wants to see him again and fuck estrogen, why is he crying? Who made estrogen a thing? 

There is definitely some nefarious omnipresent being hellbent on his suffering, because the doorbell rings just as Stiles is about to reach the crescendo of his wailing. With some decidedly manly sniffles, he works to reign in his unruly ears and tail, which have been out all week, because he hasn’t left the house. 

The doorbell rings again and Stiles makes sure to stomp his feet heavily against the stairs as he descends them, trying to strain his hearing without manifesting his ears again. It’s just one person, and they have a steady heartbeat, slower than normal for a human, but faster than usual for a were. 

The person smells like Chris Argent the closer he steps to the door, but the heartbeat is all wrong, and this person is shifting on their feet, something that Stiles is fairly certain Chris is incapable of doing. The man is textbook stoic. 

Opening the door reveals a very nervous looking Derek, and Stiles takes a deep breath to stop himself from launching through the door to attack the surly omega with hugs. Instead, he moves to the side, indicating that Derek should come in. 

Oddly enough, the smell of Chris seems to be deeply embedded into the other omega, and Stiles doesn’t really have great tact on a normal day, but add up the fact that he is essentially on his period and his freshly elevated best friend has been ignoring him for four days, and its no surprise that Stiles just gets right to the heart of the matter. 

“Did you invest in eau d’Argent? ‘Cause it smells like he has been all up in your business.” At Derek’s flinch and wide eyes, Stiles sees green, the otherworldliness of his magic fox eyes or whatever they were called flaring up and making everything sharper but draining them of color as he is filled with righteous fury for his friend.

“Did he hurt you? Coerce you? I’ll kill him. I will rip his worthless limbs from his pathetic body and beat him to death with them if he doesn’t die of exsanguination first. I know the guy who runs a crematorium, so don’t worry about the body. God, Derek, I am so sorry, I thought you were ignoring me, I should have been out there looking for you, how did you get away? Does my dad know? Does your mom?” He has his hands on Derek’s shoulders and is lightly shaking the stunned werewolf. “I should have been there, I am the worst best friend ever, but you are free now, you are safe here.”

Derek looks at him with wide eyes, and it must be the shock setting in. Stiles never really got any nasty vibes from Chris, in fact, the man seemed to be one of the most genuine good people in the world, but predators know how to mask their identities, so Stiles will not be fooled by his pretty eyes and nice smile ever again. 

He manages to push Derek into his bedroom and proceeds to smother the werewolf as much as he can, trying to overcome the heavy scent of alpha all over him. 

Derek did not think that the situation would dissolve so quickly, so he was kind of helpless against the righteous fury of Stiles, who is definitely misreading the situation.

“Stiles? I think we are on different wavelengths here.” Derek stutters out, nearly melting into the familiar embrace and calming effect of the werefox. “Chris is courting me.”

“That bastard.” Stiles spits, clearly still not catching on to what Derek is trying to tell him. “Trying to take advantage of your dynamic, huh? What a piece of shit.” 

The hateful words towards Derek’s chosen alpha both sadden and enrage him, and it is enough to finally push the words out. 

“You’ve got it wrong. I picked him, and he agreed. I have been in love with him for a long time, and he makes me happy.” Derek says, gaining confidence with each word, instead of how he usually loses steam as the words pile up. 

Stiles is silent through the proclamation and they both stare at each other with wide eyes before all of Derek’s fears and nightmares come true and tears well up in Stiles big brown eyes. 

Loud, piercing wails that stab into his eardrums start up from Stiles, and Derek braces himself for, well, he doesn’t really know, but he braces himself nonetheless. 

It’s a good thing, too, because not a moment later, he has an armful of Stiles, who seems to be hit pretty hard by the emotional overload that sometimes comes before a heat. 

Realizing that Stiles’ oddly crazy behavior is likely due to the recent changes in hormone levels and general lousiness of one of his first heats outside of presenting, Derek softens in tone and body, cuddling Stiles up against him and letting the boy cry into his shirt. 

“I’m s-s-s-sorry, Derek!” Stiles stutters over his sniffles, righteous fury and rage replaced almost instantly by regret and guilt. Derek shushes him and pets a comforting hand down his back while Stiles shudders and sobs dramatically, and in Derek’s opinion, loudly. 

But he keeps that tidbit to himself. 

Soon enough, the sobs and whines of the young fox peter out, the boy exhausting himself. Derek hopes, for himself and Stiles sake, that his hormone levels even out over the next few heats and he isn’t stuck like this for a whole week every three months. Stiles is tiring all on his own, but violent mood swings at the drop of a hat are a bit too much for anyone to handle. 

Stiles seems to gain some clarity past his rampant emotions in his tired state, and he offers Derek a more sincere apology for his behavior. 

“I was out of line, dude. Big time overstepping. I didn’t think I could feel that… strongly about anything. And then I had something to focus it on, perceived as it was, and I just kinda… went for it.” He explains though his yawns, feet kicking at the blankets from his ruined nest that Derek was pushed into.

With all the talking Derek has had to do in the past couple days, he is more than happy to let Stiles take the lead on this conversation, soothed by the rasp in his voice after all the crying he did. 

“What I meant, not that you aren’t tiger-like, is that you have this look that just reminds me of this documentary I saw where-hey!” Derek snaps his eyes open and bolts upright, looking for a threat. 

What he gets for his effort is a Darth Vader shaped pillow to the back of the head. 

“You were about to fall asleep! I was talking!” Stiles pouts, and his eyes start to water, now clutching the pillow to his chest. Derek is there in an instant, soothing the other omega with a deep purr and a good hug, and from the happy trill and thumping of a fluffy orange tail on the bed, he considers it a crisis averted. 

“I was listening, don’t worry.” Derek adds, knowing that Stiles is sensitive about people ignoring him. “You were comparing me to a tiger, and I was allowing it because tigers are cool.”

If possible, the tail starts thumping the bed even harder, and Stiles wiggles happily in Derek’s embrace, worming his arms around him in some sort of hug that only Stiles could give. 

“Chris better be so good to you or I will kill him. You tell him that, yeah?” Stiles says, shifting around until he could reach his pants and thread his tail through the hole Derek had been meaning to ask him about earlier. To be honest, Derek figured it was for easy access to new anatomy at a time of increased arousal such as the time before a heat, especially since Stiles was commando under the pants. 

From the smell in his nest, he hasn’t reached that stage of his pre-heat yet, and because it is his first heat out of presenting, it might not happen until he is in full-heat. 

“Yeah, I’ll tell him.” Derek acquiesces, mouth turned into a slight frown. Stiles can’t see because he has his face buried in Derek’s shirt, and Derek is glad. He doesn’t know if he wants to tell him about Peter yet, but if Stiles thinks Derek is holding back information, especially if it affects him, then he will stop at nothing to get him to spill.

Like Obi Wan sensing a disturbance in the force, Stiles somehow senses his inner turmoil, and looks up at his face. Derek gulps and swears he can see the gleam in Stiles eyes. 

“What’s up, Derek?” It’s an innocent question, laced with threat, threat of tickle fights and pillow fights, and annoying sounds until Derek shares what he is thinking about. He could lie, and say something else, like he is worried about being courted after Kate, or any part of his situation really, but the problem with growing up with werewolves is that he could never lie, so he never learned how, and is abysmally bad at it. Something Stiles tells him every time he attempts to do it. 

So the choice is out of his hands, he has to tell Stiles everything. 

It’s not his fault that Stiles gets shoved to the floor, the asshole started laughing.

Twenty minutes and a bruised tailbone later, Stiles has his laptop on his bed and is inputting the name ‘Peter Hale’ into every search engine he knows, getting diddly squat for his efforts. 

“Are you sure you have an uncle, Derek?” Stiles has to ask, again, because this is the fourth Peter Hale with a beer gut holding a mediocre fish he has found, and showing it to Derek gets him a head shake in the negative. 

“Yes I am sure, and no, that is not him.” Derek says. “He doesn’t have a social media, it doesn’t matter how hard you look.” 

“I get that, but there has to be some photographic record of him on here!” Stiles insists, going back to Talia’s facebook and looking through her photos again. It’s like all traces of the man have disappeared, and now he is going to get ads for private detectives and people finding sites for months. Stupid data tracking and AI advertising companies. 

“I would bring one from home, but all the ones with Peter in them were torn up by Cora about a year after he went away in a fit of rage.” Derek states, and on that, Stiles believes him. He hasn’t had a whole lot of interaction with Derek’s younger sister, but from what he was told about her and how often she attacked the punching bag set up in their backyard, it wasn’t hard to imagine. 

Frustration bubbles up far too easily inside him, and he whines at how unfair life is being to him. “Why? Why am I cursed to suffer like this? Is it my fate to be denied access to information that I don’t have any right to in the first place?” 

Derek clearly needs to take a moment to digest his words, and the frustration quickly turns into amusement as he struggle to think of a way to answer the ornery fox without causing another meltdown.

As the silence begins to pile up, a single bead of sweat forms on Derek’s brow, and his breathing picks up slightly, panic setting in. Stiles takes pity on him and shuts the laptop before setting it on the nightstand, returning to the middle of the half constructed nest to flop down mostly on top of Derek. 

“He better be at least as hot as you, that’s all I’m saying.” 

The relief is palpable, and Stiles basks in the comfort of close contact with another omega. Derek snorts and flicks one of his furry ears, which twitches under the assault. 

“He looks nice, I guess. Never thought of him like that, with him being family and all.” Derek finally surrenders, and Stiles accepts that that is the best he will be getting out of the wolf. 

“He better have a killer body too,” Stiles adds, prolonging Derek’s discomfort. The guy went MIA for three days and comes back with an alpha courting him, and Stiles is not so quick to forgive. He could have at least sent a text. 

“Sorry, Stiles.” Derek says quietly, arms tightening around his shoulders. Oops, he might have said some of that out loud. 

“I forgive you, Derek.” He rubs his face against Derek’s neck, letting him scent the older wolf, and getting a stronger smell of the calming pheromones he emits. 

They lay there in silence for a while, napping and cuddling, even partially rebuilding Stiles little nest. But the werefox has some pressing questions, and can’t hold himself back from asking them.

“So, this means you won’t be running, right?” He blurts out, and Derek jerks a little at the volume of his voice, which may or may not have been a decibel or two below yelling. Stiles just waits for him to answer, nerves running haywire. 

“Yeah, I’m not running anymore, since I am officially being courted.” Derek explains, and Stiles nods, both soothed and unhappy at the answer. On the one hand, he knew how much Derek was dreading the run, so he is glad that his friend can take that off their plate. On the other hand, he was really looking forward to having someone he knew their with him, other than Scott, who is an alpha anyways, so he won’t even be allowed to hang out with him before he is released into the arena. 

“Thanks for telling me. I feel better knowing for sure.” Stiles says, assuring the other omega, who was sniffing the air subtly, trying to pick up on the other’s feelings. 

“From what my mom told me, there isn’t a whole lot of downtime for omegas anyway.” Derek tells him, and Stiles lets out a questioning hum, silently urging him to say more. “They pretty much sign in, get tagged for safety with the armband thing, and get sent out. Given that there are less than fifty omegas running, it’s not that long of a process, and the emissary, Deaton, personally sees to each omega before you guys get released.”

Stiles knows all this from the information packet, and from what people online have said, but it still feels good to have Derek say it to him. 

When his dad gets home, he finds Stiles asleep in his bed with nearly every blanket in the house piled around him, content smile on his face, and the lingering scent of Derek coating the whole mess. 

He shoots off a quick text to Chris, who confirms that Derek was with Stiles for most of the day, and that the two talked and made up. The Sheriff smiles to himself and slowly shuts the door, after, of course, untangling his blanket from where it was wrapped around the old afghan from the downstairs couch.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The run is here! Well, actually, this is literally a set up chapter for the run, but hey, semantics.

The run is upon him before Peter has time to unpack all his family drama. And by unpack he means talk to his nephew and apologize for his abhorrent behavior. It might be because he hasn’t given a sincere apology since he was eight and broke his mother’s favorite handpainted vase, but it could just as well be the nerves from the thought of having Derek tell him that he is the worst person ever and saying that he never wants to see him again. 

Or it could be that Peter is too busy, worrying about potential ‘what ifs’ in his dingiest pair of sweats, the ones with the small bleach stain on the hem. 

Peter scowls to himself, wondering if he can change his narrator to one that isn’t so insightful and blunt. 

On the record, he cannot.

The moon laughs down at him from its position in the sky, and he glares back, closing his eyes against the glow, determined to get some sleep before tomorrow, the day he claims the boy who sent him into a near frenzy with his scent alone. 

And make no mistake, he will claim him. Talia mentioned the omega would make it a challenge, and the thought just fires him up even more. The reason he always blanched at claiming an omega for himself during his travels, is that the ones he met were too… subservient. Well, the available ones, anyway. He met plenty of free spirited ones that were either mated or had no interest in mating, but either way they were off limits. 

He turns again under his sheets, restless. His brain won’t stop thinking of scenario after scenario, good and bad, and at one point he almost starts chewing on his nails, a nasty habit he thought he grew out of in high school. 

He flops onto his back and stares at the ceiling, resolutely trying to ignore the fact that his cock is at half-mast. He hasn’t touched himself since he had his ‘crisis’ with Derek, and when he found out he would be participating in the run, he told himself that he wouldn’t let himself cum unless it was inside the tight, wet heat of his mate. 

He is regretting everything right about now, hand massaging the top of his thigh while he resists the urge to touch himself. He can do this, he has control, he has the best control, excluding the little incident that nearly cost him his relationship with his family, but other than that, he is in control. 

Confident in his privacy, he lets out a weak and pitiful moan of frustration that doesn’t sound far off from the cry of a petulant child, and rolls back onto his side, willing sleep to take him.

The alarm clock on Stiles nightstand goes off exactly two seconds after Stiles opens his eyes, and he squints at it in suspicion. The glowing, red numbers on it’s digital clockface tell him it is five in the morning, an ungodly hour where the moon is retiring for the day but the sun is still in its bed, and so should all other living beings. 

Which leads to twenty minutes later, with his father banging his door open, shotgun in hand, and yelling about intruders. To be fair, the poor man was woken from his slumber by a very loud bang that shook the walls enough to put ripples in his bedtime glass of water on his dresser, and very aggressive growling from Stiles. 

The Sheriff lowers his weapon with a pointed look at his son, who is wrapped up in his comforter like a Russian babushka, with only his face showing, growling at the mess of broken plastic on the floor. 

The remains of the digital clock, which had the nerve to try and wake him up again twenty minutes after its first attempt. Stiles looks to the gun in his fathers hands, and feels a little put out that his dad didn’t shoot the remains of the clock to make sure it stayed dead.

“Aw hell, kid.” The Sheriff says, ambling back to his room to put the gun back in its safe. Upon his return, Stiles is a tiny bit more awake, but none the more happy about it. 

His dad sits on the edge of the bed, and Stiles immediately sidles up to him, blanket still wrapped around his head. The comfort of his Dad takes the edge off, and Stiles doesn’t relax, not exactly, but loses some tension in his body, sagging a little bit.

“You did all that training, and yet you never trained to wake up early, did you?” His father asks, and Stiles groans in response, an answer in and of itself, falling backwards to curl up in a ball in the center of his mattress. 

His own father, the bastard, just laughs, and hefts himself to his feet. “Well, I am going to put a pot of coffee on, and if you hurry, I might not drink it all.” 

Sheriff Stilinski may not be the paragon of the perfect parent, but he sure as hell knows how to get his son out of bed, and this time is no different. By the time the coffee stops dripping into the pot, Stiles is dressed and sitting at the table. 

He has an old pair of sports shorts on with a faded Green Day tee shirt, and his hair is a mess, the back both matted down and sticking up in awkward angles at the same time. 

Once coffee number two is half gone, Stiles thinks he can string a few words together in a coherent manner. “Scentless soap?” He asks, inquiring to the whereabouts of the special soap he has been instructed to use before coming to the run. 

As the name suggests, it has no additional artificial or natural scent, and helps to enhance ones natural scent, so that there are no mix-ups when pursuing a mate. It wouldn’t be very good if Scott entered the race smelling heavily of an unmated omega, because an alpha might smell that and think that Scott is the omega, and boy would that be an embarrassing situation to work out.

Not that Scott has been around enough lately to even remotely smell like Stiles. But he really can’t blame that fully on Scott, the circumstances are stacked against them, with them being the opposite dynamic and weres to boot. 

But he can blame him a little. Just to help him feel better. 

He is brought out of his thoughts by his dad setting the small bar down in front of him, still wrapped in the fancy paper with a twine bow. Very Etsy. 

Downing the rest of the bitter life giving liquid, Stiles heads back upstairs to start his shower, nearly forgetting to grab his ‘uniform’ to change into. 

The ‘uniform’ comprises of a pair of moderate quality shorts that come to just above his knees and a plain white tee shirt, put in an airtight bag with instructions not to open until the morning of the run, after he showers using the soap. It is all part of the scent process, eliminating any contaminating smells that might confuse any sensitive sniffers during the run. 

The part Stiles really doesn’t like is the ban of deodorant. He gets that using axe or something like that would be a no go, but he has one that only smells faintly of baby powder, which is far more agreeable than his body odor after a long run, but rules are rules, and there is no way he would get past all the werewolves in charge of the run smelling like baby powder. 

Why is it called baby powder if adults use it just as often, if not more often than babies? It is a question that plagues him on the short drive to the preserve, and he lets it eat at him, rather than stress about what is about to happen. 

It’s actually here. The Run. The Mating Run. 

He is actually about to take part in a run with werewolves and werecoyotes and maybe even another werefox or two, if the amount of people milling around are any indication. 

Luckily, his dad is a moderator of the run, so they get VIP parking, right by the door. 

When Stiles imagined the run during the last few months, he kind of pictured a picnic pavilion and maybe an outhouse in regards to actual structures, and maybe a five foot tall chain link fence in mild disrepair, like the ones he has seen in every other nature setting. 

It is a stark contrast to the two story building sprawled out in front of him, with big glass windows that he can see through to the woods on the other side of the fifteen foot barbed wire fence that reaches all around the arena, disappearing into the woods on either side, hiding just how big the arena actually is. 

“Whoa.” He needs a minute to take things in, feeling a bit overwhelmed. 

His father gets it, and the pair just sit in the car for a few moments, until Stiles nerves and ADD get the better of him, and he starts feeling cooped up. 

The worst part about this whole ordeal is that he can’t hug his dad, who is an alpha, so his scent is considered a contaminate for the race, and he would need to be cleaned again and given fresh clothes. He side eyes his father, debating risking it anyways. 

As if reading his mind, Sheriff Stilinski walks up to the automatic doors of the main building and Stiles has to hurry to catch up, lest he be left behind. 

As the doors swoosh open, Stiles realizes that there are no unmated alphas here, only omegas, betas, and mated alphas. His dad is technically an unmated alpha, but he is human and the Sheriff, so no one calls him out on it. Plus, its not like he himself is looking for a mate, even though Stiles has made sure to tell him clearly and frequently that he doesn’t have to hold himself back for Stiles sake, because he is one hundred percent on board with his dad having some happiness in his life. 

Other than Stiles, of course, the man’s obvious main source of happiness. 

The check in line for participating omegas is on the left side of the air conditioned building, and Stiles can tell from the various betas wielding clipboards waiting on the right side of the room with barely restrained urgency that his father would need to report for his own duties soon enough. 

“Here’s to hoping I catch a big one.” Stiles jokes, trying to dispel the tension between them. It earns him some glares from passing betas and omegas, who probably think he is here to land a powerful alpha to mooch off of. 

In retrospect, he definitely could have worded that better, or said almost anything else. 

Both he and the Sheriff look a bit stricken as the words leave his mouth, but the bubble of tension seems to reach its limits, and when it pops, they are left chuckling at Stiles pension for saying the wrong things at the wrong times. 

“Try to stay out of too much trouble, alright kid?” The Sheriff requests, already accepting that he will be taking care of some mess his son will make as the day progresses. He just hopes to keep casualties to a minimum. 

Stiles gives a wobbly hand gesture and ducks away from the hand that halfheartedly swipes at the back of his head, dancing away towards the sign in line. He almost runs into some poor beta lady struggling to carry six steaming cups of coffee, but reigns himself in just in time. 

Three or so months ago, sans fox reflexes, he would have flattened that lady like a pancake and gotten scalded with hot coffee, so at least he gets one good thing out of the whole ‘presenting’ ordeal. 

Slightly less clumsy. Or, to be more precise, collision prevention. 

He does eventually make it to the desk where participants can sign in, and Deaton, the emissary for the Hale pack and resident druid, checks him over himself, with Talia Hale standing over him, soothing a part of Stiles that he didn’t know needed soothing. 

“Hey Mrs. Hale!” Stiles greets her with a little wave that nearly hits Deaton in the face while the man leans in to fix the armband thing in place. “Where is Derek today?” 

The alpha smiles back, and has to hold back her laughter at Stiles flailing. “Cora is guarding him at the house, she insisted on staying with him there in case any alphas here got it into their heads to try and hike it there instead of running.” Her tone implies what she thinks about that, fondness and exasperation in her voice. 

Stiles is still a little bummed at the fact that Derek won’t be able to hang out with him before they let the omegas loose, but even if he was here, its not like they could cuddle or anything, and Stiles is still working on Derek’s conversational ability. 

Speaking of Derek, Stiles spots none other than Chris Argent striding towards them, and narrows his eyes at the alpha, readying himself for a shovel talk. 

Talia must sense this and want to avoid a scene, because she smoothly steps out from her spot behind Deaton to meet the man halfway, which puts them directly next to the Sheriff, who was descended upon by the betas with clipboards as soon as Stiles parted from his side. 

A sharp snap of gloves draws Stiles back to Deaton, who has put the blue armband around his bicep to his liking. 

“You are all set, Mr. Stilinski. Good luck on your run.” He says smoothly, his hand gesturing for Stiles to go through the door behind the desk. 

“Luck has nothing to do with it.” Stiles says confidently, contrary to what he feels on the inside, which is like a gooey mess of nerves and sweat. 

Peter stares deeply at the array of fruit he set out for himself the night before, hands braced on the counter in front of him. 

Orange, banana, apple, pear, kiwi, grapefruit. He moves the grapefruit out of the pile, they only taste good with sugar sprinkled on top of them, and the last thing he needs is a sugar high, and the inevitable crash. Orange and kiwi get moved next, needing too much work to eat efficiently. Then the pear gets tossed in the trash, because when he picks it up, it is super squishy, so its overripe. 

He decides to eat three bananas and four apples, cutting up the apples into slices so he can dip them in peanut butter, a juvenile, but delicious snack, and more importantly, one that doesn’t sit heavy in his stomach, so the odds of him throwing up due to nerves are severely lessened. 

According to the packet that Talia so graciously left him, the alphas are required to report to the main building in the preserve anytime between six and eight in the morning, in order to process them all. 

Alphas outnumber the omega population about ten to one, so there are most likely five to ten times more alphas running than omegas, and he was able to find out that there were exactly fifty two omegas running this year, putting the number of participating alphas anywhere from two fifty to five hundred. 

Luckily for the alphas, they didn’t need to go through a rigorous cleaning procedure before the run, because it is not their scents that get followed. The only instructions for him were to wear comfortable clothing that he didn’t mind getting ruined, whether by dirt, claws or the other possible ways to destroy clothing. 

Peter opts for a tight, dark blue vee neck tee shirt and a pair of running tights that came up to his calves and made his ass look fantastic. Well, almost everything made his ass look fantastic, but these pants especially so. He figures once he has his mate, he won’t need any extra attention on his ass…et anymore, so he doesn’t mind if they get shredded by his mate.

A jockstrap is a must, even if it does elevate his ass to Instagram model status, because even the thought of going commando in these pants is painful. 

Shoes are tricky, because they will be one of the first things to go, right out of the gate if he still has them on at that point, but all the shoes he owns are expensive, and he is unwilling to part with a single pair of them. Thankfully, he thought of this yesterday, and went out to buy a cheap pair of slip on sandals that he can just throw aside without a care as to whether they will still be there when he gets back. 

Getting ready for the day is cathartic for Peter, giving the alpha some routine to such an unpredictable day, and even though he cuts his usual forty five minute shower to a mere twenty, he still feels refreshed and rejuvenated when he steps out onto his fluffy bathmat. 

He doesn’t wear any cologne on a normal day, so its no hardship to follow that direction, but he does lament the fact that he isn’t allowed to use any hair products, scentless or otherwise, because it could affect the way an omega potentially reacts to his scent, if he catches one. 

When he catches one, he corrects himself in his head, inner monologue broken. 

He brushes his teeth two extra times, and only stops when his gums start to bleed from his excessive force. Half a bottle of mouthwash later, and Peter feels like he personally knows what it feels like to have the entirety of the arctic in his mouth.

The clock reads six thirty, which is close enough, and he grabs his keys off the counter, slipping his wallet into his ridiculously small pocket on the side of his thigh. When he walks past the floor length mirror on the way out the door, he sees how obvious the bulge of the wallet is on his leg and decides to just hold it in his hand until he can stash it in the glove compartment of his car. 

The Shelby is waiting for him in pristine condition from its VIP parking spot, and the fancy little beep it makes as he unlocks it lifts his spirits. He is sure he will have the best car out of all the silly little alphas in the preserve, and its just further proof that he can provide for a mate, his mate. The spicy, cinnamon scented delight at the end of the road. 

Greaser shades in place, Peter backs out smoothly and tries to stretch the twenty minute drive to thirty minutes, but ends up making it in fifteen. 

Man, that little car can move. 

About thirty or so alphas are already loitering about, and most of them stare at his car in either envy or excitement. He only preens a little bit, parking next to a shiny new Porche, reeking of omega. But not his omega. 

Unsurprisingly, the scent does nothing to him, except blur out the other scents around him. He scrunches up his nose and stalks towards the main building, only for a far too friendly beta to step directly into his path. 

“Sir, alpha sign in is at the tent.” She informs him in a nice but firm tone, broking no argument. She looks to be a little older than Peter, dark, curly hair pulled back from her face and neck by a high ponytail. Her nametag reads ‘Melissa’.

Peter looks in the direction she pointed out, and sure enough, there is a line of people already started. 

“Oh.” He says eloquently, shocked out of his ‘cooler than you’ attitude. He shakes himself mentally and starts over. “What I mean to say, is thank you. Sorry for the confusion, ma’am.” He smiles when she reacts positively to his deference to her authority, and gives him a friendly nod, watching as he walks towards the other alphas already in line. 

He ends up standing in line behind two baby alphas, who look like they are barely out of high school. One is a female, fiery red hair done up in a perfect ponytail, wearing joggers not unlike Peters, that show off her fine figure, and a tight green athletic top that makes her green eyes pop. The other is a scraggly looking boy with a crooked jaw, who can’t seem to stop yawning and looks one moment away from sleep. His attire consists of a beat up pair of running shorts and a faded shirt with some obscure logo on it.

Despite their apparent differences, they seem to be on friendly enough terms. From the little bit of conversation he eavesdropped on, he now knows that this ‘Scott’ fellow, is worried about reacting to his friend ‘Stiles’ scent, and that the young woman, ‘Lydia’ is going to catch ‘Jackson’, her high school sweetheart. 

Derek isn’t mentioned, so Peter tunes them out, assuming they have nothing to do with his future mate. Only to tune right back in when Scott asks why she wants to run at all when she isn’t even a shifter. 

Peter must look a little too interested in the conversation, and to be fair, he did whip his head around at that last comment. He’s a little nervous, okay? Cut a guy some slack, he can’t always be the cool and levelheaded informant, even though he wants to. 

She directs her next words directly to him. “No, I am not a shifter. Yes, Talia knows I am participating, I got her direct approval. Problem?” She cocks a hip and stares him right in the eyes, which nearly makes him flash his own in response. He holds back, barely, but gets rewarded with her scowl as she huffs at his arched eyebrow. 

“Banshee.” Scott yawns, which turns into a yelp at the end as Lydia stomps on his foot. “Ow! I may have super healing, but I still feel pain! What was that for?” He whines, and his voice grates on Peters frayed nerves. 

A sentiment he and Lydia seem to share. “Don’t go around telling random alphas what I am! It’s not your information to give!” She hisses, and Peter is feeling a little emotionally out of his depth recently, so he empathizes, which is big, now that he thinks about it, but he can reflect on his personal and emotional growth later. 

“Don’t get too worked up, kid. Talia’s my sister, I would have found out sooner or later.” And look at that, he is giving out information of his own. With no prompting and nothing to gain from it. What. Is. Happening. 

Can this line move any slower? Peter peaks over the heads of the two young adults now blatantly staring at him with thinly veiled curiosity, or in Scotts case, open curiosity. “Oh, you must be Peter! Lydia, didn’t Talia say something about her brother Peter coming to town? I didn’t know you would be in the run though. Are you planning on staying in the area?” 

Peter is saved from dodging the questions when the pair reach the desk set up under the giant picnic tent, remisniscent of one that would be used for a festival or outdoor wedding. Which, he supposes, is really the meat and bones of this event anyway. 

The alphas are given a quick shot, injecting the micro tracker into their arms, and a bright red strip of cloth is tied over the puncture wound, a bandage and a marker, indicating a participant in the run, and the fact that they are an alpha, in case there were any doubts. 

Peter gives his name to the attendant, another beta, and then a man in a doctors coat injects his tracker, tapping the screen of his tablet to label him. “Hale, Peter. Alrighty, you are all set to go. We will call up the alphas when it’s time to run. Best of luck to you!” 

“Luck has nothing to do with it, doctor…Dunbar.” Peter reads off his nametag, giving the man a tight smile before stalking off in the opposite direction of the apparent Banshee and scruffy werewolf. 

He contents himself with wandering the outskirts of the waiting area around the fenced in arena, amusing himself by trying to get as close to wild squirrels and bunnies as possible before they detect the presence of an apex predator and scurry off. 

He actually gets his hand on the back of a bunny before it makes a sound that bunnies should not be allowed to make and takes off like a bat out of hell into the undergrowth, little heart nearly bursting with fear. 

“You like rabbits, Lenny?” A smooth, English voice cuts the silence of the forest and even the cicadas go quiet for a moment. Peter really doesn’t want to turn around but he knows that the other man won’t leave until he does.

“Deucalion, what a lovely surprise.” His tone indicates that while it may be a surprise, it most certainly isn’t lovely. When he heaves himself up and turns around to face the other man, he has to use all his training on control not to burst out laughing. 

Deucalion is a bit older than Peter, nearing his fifties, and is closer to Talia in age. He is also wearing a full on track suit. Matching sweatband and all. His enigmatic smile is definitely undercut by the ensemble, and Peter has never wanted to share a moment with someone else more than right now. He needs for everyone to see this. 

He knows better than to reach for his phone, if he even had it on him, he left it in his car with his wallet and the keys were safely tucked into the wheel well of Talia’s SUV in the private parking area. Deucalion may be blind, but he can hear an arrow whistling through the air, and it has saved Peters ass more times than he can count. 

“What on earth are you wearing, you old bastard?” Peter finally has to ask, unable to hold back his laughter any longer. 

The older man laughs with him, and Peter feels a rush of affection for his dear friend. “I certainly hope all the other alphas underestimate you, Deuc.” It’s what Peter did, and if he hadn’t been the last known person to acquire a specific tome then the mistake would have been his last. 

“Just got stateside a few days ago, Hale.” Deucalion replies, turning and walking into the woods, prompting Peter to walk with him. “Your sister invited me, but it didn’t sound like she knew of out acquaintance.” There is no inflection or question mark in his words, but it is an inquiry all the same. 

“You know I play my cards close to my chest.” Peter replies, giving him an answer while at the same time dodging the question. “I didn’t know you were looking for a mate, and I would have put participating in a run as the last thing you would do to find one.” He notes, once again taking in the ridiculous outfit the other alpha has on. 

Deucalion nods thoughtfully, giving an agreeing hum. “Yes, well, I find myself rather lonely being the only single person in my pack. Kali and Enis are an odd pair, but a pair nonetheless, and the twins each found themselves a human mate not too long after you left England.” His tone is wistful, and Peter feels for him, which shocks him. 

Empathy has not always been Peters strong suit, in fact, it was the main reason any and all relationships he attempted in the past had failed. For him to be feeling it now…

“You have changed, Peter.” Deucalion observes. Peter knows he can’t see him, but the man stares at him anyway, challenging Peter to argue. “You meet a sweet omega? Going to settle down?” It’s a light taunt, but there is no malice behind it. 

Peter doesn’t respond right away, the light of the rising sun filters through the green leaves intermittently, and he studies the changing patterns of the light on the forest floor. “Well, I haven’t met him yet.” He concedes.

“Hmm, but you know you want a him?” Deucalion starts walking again, slowly, and Peter falls into step beside him. 

“Well, I want a specific him. It’s a long story that I hope to god you never hear, but the short version is I smelled him when I visited my sister.” Peter explains, not realizing how good it felt to talk to another person about this. “Turns out, he is a friend of my nephew, and had signed up for the race a while back. Talia got me in last minute so I could have a chance to catch him.”

The low hum of a large group of people up ahead signals how close they are to the waiting area for the run, and they stop just outside hearing distance of others.

“What an adorable little love story you have there, Peter.” The older alpha laughs, and Peter has to stop himself from punching him in the shoulder. 

“Shut up, old man.” He says before laughing along with his friend. He feels lighter after talking with him, and most of his nerves are gone now, replaced with delicious anticipation. 

It’s just in time, too. There is a god-awful crackle of static from a large speaker near the front building, and a tinny voice tells them that the alphas are going to be allowed into the arena in fifteen minutes, and to make their way into the large, stadium-like building that he tried to go in earlier, when that beta stopped him. 

Peter decides to take a chance, and reaches out to place a steadying hand on Deucalions shoulder. The older man smiles so large that it almost looks inhuman, understanding immediately what Peter means to do. 

As they make their way to the main hall, people stop and stare. At first its probably the track suit, with the white stripes it looks absolutely awful, but they part like the red sea for the pair of them. After all, what’s the harm in letting a blind alpha get a spot in the front of the line, it’s not like he is going to be any competition, right?

Talia is waiting near the front of the line, and she has to fake a coughing fit to steady her breathing and heartrate at the sight of her brother leading the deceptively senile looking man to the front of the line. 

“Deucalion, I see you have met Peter, my brother.” She says smoothly when they finally reach her, at the very front of the line. 

“Well, I am glad you see, because I sure don’t, my dear.” Deucalion says blandly, and that startles a laugh out of Peter and relaxes the riled up alphas they just cut in front of, who now stand down at the knowledge that they aren’t behind any real competition. 

If only they knew. 

Talia picks up on what Deucalion was doing, and ignores the jab. “Of course, I am sorry for the insensitive comment. Make sure to let me or one of the attendants know if you need anything.” 

Having said her piece, Talia walks away, and Peter makes sure to talk loudly when he says, “Alright, Deucalion I am going to go back to my spot in line, okay? Let these guys know if you need anything.” He gestures to the impatient alphas behind him, who pale a little at the implication of being held accountable for anything.

“I mean, I could stay up here with him if you don’t mind.” Peter says in a quieter voice, like Deucalion isn’t an alpha werewolf, to the alphas, who look at one another for a moment before nodding their assent. After all, Peter is going to be looking out for the blind alpha, so again, not really competition. 

His glee is hard to contain, but contain it he does. He wouldn’t want to ruin his plan before it has a chance to unfold. Luckily, his sister starts her rant about safety and rules so he can focus on her voice and keep himself in check. 

“Hello, and welcome to the annual Mating Run, hosted by the Hale pack of Beacon Hills.” Talia introduces herself to the growing crowd of alphas, well, dynamically alphas. Mostly beta werewolves and a few other supernatural creatures mixed in, but usually if you were a supernatural, you presented as either an alpha or an omega, the two most fertile dynamics, and therefore more likely to produce offspring, to carry on the dwindling supernatural population. 

But that’s a history/biology lesson that Peter doesn’t need to think back to, so he tunes back in to Talia, who has just introduced herself as the local alpha werewolf, and the main overseer of the event. 

“To make sure everyone is safe, and to provide security for the event are my most trusted friends and family,” Talia goes on, introducing the good Sheriff, who Peter is pretty sure married one of Talia’s old friends, but he can’t care to remember, the new head of the Argents, a good egg by the name of Christopher, whose presence is a bit too much to unpack for Peter right now, so he ignores, and of course, the druid and Hale pack emissary, Deaton. 

There were various others that made up the security, including distant relatives and volunteering mated pairs or other such trusted members of the supernatural community. Peter didn’t particularly care about them, though, and took the time to inspect his nails, picking out dirt and other filth from underneath them, likely collected during his earlier sabbatical in the forest. 

He tunes back in when Talia goes over the rules again, just to focus on something other than his rising nerves and excitement. 

“The goal of the Mating Run is simple, all eligible omegas are released into the quarantined section of the preserve here,” She gestures behind her to the giant glass walls, and the gated forest behind them. “an hour before the alphas get released, in order to spread out and find a place to settle in, or to run, in the hopes of an alpha giving chase.”

Some of the alphas murmur at this, audibly excited at the chance to chase down a mate. Talia holds up a hand for silence and they quiet down easily enough. “There are, however, some ground rules that are strictly upheld for the safety of all participants. First, no omegas are to be harmed or coerced in any way, if you are found guilty of such acts, you will be subject to judgement by my pack, and the Argent’s code, which is in effect for the duration of the run.”

Peter knows the Argent code, even though its not until after he left that the Argents moved to Beacon Hills. They are a large family, with many branches all over the worlds however, and Peter has had a couple run ins with the family before. Each branch was a little different, but the core values remained the same; if you harm an innocent, the Argents will harm you. 

Talia continues her rules, her authoritative voice ringing out across the sea of ready alphas, and with the super hearing, no mic is needed, she hardly even needs to raise her voice. “Another no less important rule is that killing another alpha is strictly forbidden. If you and another chase the same omega, you may fight it out if you so wish, as we cannot stop you from that, but the line is drawn at permanent injury and death. If you break this rule, again, you will be subject to the Argent code and my pack. Am I clear?”

She gets a unanimous affirmative from the crowd, and Peter lets out another tiny bit of tension at the way even the macho alphas right behind him are whispering about how awful of a thought it is to harm an omega, or go so far as to kill a competing alpha. 

Peter wouldn’t hesitate to kill for his omega, but he certainly is glad he doesn’t have to. 

“You will have forty eight hours to chase, and if you so choose bond with your mate before you need to register back here, or we will send out search parties.” She takes a breath before going on. “While alphas like yourselves are watched out for, you are not monitored like the omegas, so if you get hurt or need assistance, be loud, and I assure you someone will hear.”

The last part is directed at the few supernatural species attending who do not have accelerated healing, and Talia must like the response she gets because she nods decisively and makes a discrete hand gesture to one of the human betas who scurries off to do her bidding. 

“Just follow the rules, and the scent, and enjoy your run!” Her well wishes are met with a collective howl from the surrounding alphas who surge forwards when the glass windows reveal to be giant doors that burst open on her last words, bringing in the fresh, forest air tinged with the scent of this years omegas. 

Peter is one of the first out of the building, alongside Deucalion, who has shifted his eyes to see in alpha vision, a rare form of sight that only a very powerful alpha werewolf possesses, that can allow one to see others in a sort of heat vision, but for Deucalion it replaces his lost vision, and has allowed him to play the part of the helpless cripple so effectively. 

Peter sprints far into the clearing, nearly past the tree line before he stops to scent the air, hoping to catch a hint of his omega. Luck is on his side, as he picks up a whiff of the intoxicating cinnamon sugar smell to the north east, and with a predatory grin, he races into the forest, focus honed in on the scent of his future mate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the cliff hanger, I am an evil person on the inside. Feeling the creativity and motivation for this story though, so more to come soon!


End file.
